Back in 2015, when Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Google LLC, he and the then newly appointed CEO of Microsoft Corporation, Satya Nadella had forged a truce pact that had abruptly ended all their ongoing disputes. The purpose of this legal truce was to get a fresh start to resolve the existing bitter relation between the two companies and for them to be able to compete without getting into legal battles. This was mainly done to improve cooperation between the two companies, and keep their businesses more private and out of the hands of regulators. This truce was specifically visible in action when Microsoft remained unusually quiet during the US government’s antitrust suit against Google. However, the impact of this truce began to fade when Microsoft publicly supported the new Australian law proposal that would force Google to pay its news publishers for their content, earlier this year. Microsoft also further criticized Google for their advertising technology which isn’t interoperable with other companies allowing Google to monopolize the market. Microsoft believes if Google opens up this tech to other companies, it would make the industry more competitive allowing other companies to make profits as well instead of Google being the only company benefiting from this technology. Microsoft wants Google to give marketers equal access to various search engines and not just their own, when marketers organize campaigns with Google’s technology, and they also want Google to create an environment where content creators can get paid for their contributions. Google on the other hand believes that Microsoft is objecting to Google’s way of running their business and ‘trying to break the way open internet works’ as they view Google as a threat to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing service.
Both these companies are two of the large competitors in the field of web-search, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Hence, they were often seen locking horns publicly. One of the ways Microsoft publicly attacked Google was by running an ad campaign from 2012 to 2014 called ‘Scroogled’. The scroogled ads demonstrated how Google breached people’s privacy and made profits out of them by suggesting targeted ads. Microsoft’s agenda was to demonstrate all the ways in which they claimed Google was stealing the private data of their customers by going through their emails and searches to pick up keywords to present to them keyword appropriate ads. Microsoft had even gone as far to sell t-shirts and mugs with captions bashing Google. Before this in 2013, Google had gotten into another dispute with Microsoft over the Youtube app. When the Windows phone project was at its peak, Google had agreed to collaborate with Microsoft. However, Google was later seen to break that promise of collaboration when they blocked a Youtube app developed by Microsoft for the Windows phones. In order to mitigate these conflicts, the two new CEOs of the companies had forged the legal truce pact. They hoped that the pact would boost the relation between the companies and improve their cooperation. Through this agreement, Microsoft had hoped to find a way to run Android apps on windows. However, in the end Google was seen to go back on its words and not cooperate and Microsoft had to turn to Amazon to get Android apps running on Windows 11. This attack of Google’s on Microsoft took place earlier this year indicating the end of the truce. Many even believed that this agreement was biased and only benefitted Google.
The two companies have shown little to no eagerness to renew or extend this truce pact. It is anticipated that due to the end of the truce, these dormant tensions may resurface again. However, this may backfire on both the companies that are two of the leading US tech groups as they will become direct targets of regulators who aim to establish barriers and regulate competition and make it more open to other companies. This may result in loss of monopoly for both the companies. If more companies are allowed to enter the competition, not only will their consumer base get diluted they may even not be making as much profit as they do now. All these speculations are yet to occur, till then all their consumers must wait and see how this feud plays out.
By Faiza Nuren Rafa
