Microsoft has been funding anti-Google group since 2007

[Emil]

For the last three years, Microsoft has been funding the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (ICOMP), which has been pointing out Google's dominance in search to regulators and journalists, according to The Telegraph. Microsoft is ICOMP's sole sponsor and the software giant is responsible for picking ICOMP's directors. ICOMP helped push the EU to launch an investigation into Google last month. It all began in 2007, when Microsoft and the PR agency Burson-Marsteller formed ICOMP to fight against Google's acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

"ICOMP's mission is to promote widespread support for principles that are essential to a healthy online environment," says the organization's mission statement. "Key goals are to encourage competition, transparency, data privacy and respect for intellectual property protection as well as well as the adoption of best practices to promote creativity, innovation, safety and trust. ICOMP’s overall objective is the sustainable growth of the Internet consistent with the rule of law."

ICOMP doesn't go out of its way to make clear that Microsoft is its main funder, but it's not as if it hides the information either. At the bottom of every page of its website, there's the statement "ICOMP is funded by member contributions as well as sponsorship from Microsoft."

This kind of influence by proxy is common practice in various industries, and especially so in the technology market. When Microsoft was under investigation by the EU a few years back, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) played a big part against the software giant. ECIS is funded largely by Microsoft competitors who had a complaint in the case, including Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, and Red Hat.

In other words, this is just business as usual. Groups like these are formed by companies like Microsoft and Google because these corporations have the money to do so. Their big pockets are being put to use to influence legislation and litigation, but that's just one of the many aspects of how democracy works, and you just have to make sure not to be swayed too easily.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/41531-microsoft-has-been-funding-anti-google-group-since-2007.html

 

[Guest]

90% of the world's wealth is in the hand of 3% of the world's population. Poverty and war exist because of the unequal distribution of resources.

Here, the corporations have so much money, they throw it at sueing and investigating other companies.

What a waste.

 

[Guest]

I do agree that this is more of a political catfight rather than a real initiative. However, this is a complete waste of money on Microsoft's part. They should be pouring money into how to be more competitive against Google, Linux, and Apple. Maybe they will scrap Windows like they scrapped the Windows Mobile OS for the Windows Phone 7 OS. There's still hope...

 

[Benny26]

Over 90% of the world's wealth is in the hands of around only 3% of the world's population. Poverty and wars have long existed because of the unequal distribution of such resources.
--Guest

I like that quote (i have tweaked it a little bit for ya)...It looks like it's come straight out of a speech somewhere.

Are you an ex president or something? lol

Wendig0 said:
No, he's a pro-welfare bleeding heart communist.

Ahh, never thought about it that way...

 

[Wendig0]

Benny26 said:

Are you an ex president or something? lol

No, he's a pro-welfare bleeding heart communist.

 

[Guest]

"90% of the world's wealth is in the hand of 3% of the world's population. Poverty and war exist because of the unequal distribution of resources."

Which is the natural order of things and that is why Darwin's law works on a basic level. If conflict ends, so does innovation and technological advancement. How many important things have Buddhist monks and communistic regimes invented?

 

[Wagan8r]

Guest said:
"90% of the world's wealth is in the hand of 3% of the world's population. Poverty and war exist because of the unequal distribution of resources."

Which is the natural order of things and that is why Darwin's law works on a basic level. If conflict ends, so does innovation and technological advancement. How many important things have Buddhist monks and communistic regimes invented?

Hear, hear!

 

[ET3D]

Guest said:
90% of the world's wealth is in the hand of 3% of the world's population. Poverty and war exist because of the unequal distribution of resources.

Poverty might be solved by equal distribution, but wars exist because people are *******s.

 

[Guest]

The weak one tries to cut down the other man's straw to make it shorter than theirs while the strong one focuses solely on increasing the length of their straw.

- the wise fool

 

[Johny47]

That sounds very 'dastardly' of them but good they've been failing at their evil plans hahaha =P

Google's great.

 

[yRaz]

I think it's funny how everyone throws around the word communist and socialist without ever really knowing what they mean. People who have no idea what they are talking about should stay out of politics. Where's the Darwinism on dumb people?

anyway, I like using google, I hate ask.com, yahoo and bing. Google did it right first and now everyone hates them for it.

Guest said:
"90% of the world's wealth is in the hand of 3% of the world's population. Poverty and war exist because of the unequal distribution of resources."

Which is the natural order of things and that is why Darwin's law works on a basic level. If conflict ends, so does innovation and technological advancement. How many important things have Buddhist monks and communistic regimes invented?

so are you saying that if people stop fighting each other that all innovation will stop? The Buddhist monk argument is ridiculous because they don't WANT anything. They have no need for material possessions. So, are you also trying to imply that they are dumb? Because I'm sure that from what you have said, they are MUCH smarter than you.

Also, by your idea of how innovation happens, communist regimes should be at the forefront of technology and innovation.

You're just another right-wing conservative nut job who's arrogance and ignorance wont let you see past your own nose. It would also seem that you have a complete lack of empathy.

 

[Archean]

I guess Microsoft is only trying to put some pressure back on Google, since it was Google (mainly) which sabotaged their intention to buy yahoo out-rightly (IMO they didn't needed to buy anyway) ..... so I see nothing wrong with this even if this ICOMP wasn't so forthcoming about MS being a sponsor.

 

[realista69]

Microsoft Owns you!!!!

 

[Guest]

If Microsoft is doing it than, well, we will just have to find some way to justify it won't we!

Three cheers for corruption!
Three cheers for deception!
Three cheers for blaming others for our problems!
Three cheers for justifying immorality with "cause they did it too"
Three cheers for endless knee-shaking pixel staring epileptic inducing machinations!
Three cheers for constantly wanting more more more more (times "infinity")!
Three cheers for never feeling at peace, satisified, loving and happy like monks do!
Three cheers for packaging mind-numbing change as "innovation", "evolution" and "improvement"!
Three cheers for generating mountains of toxic garbage with v1, v2, v3, v189 of everything for our children's children to drown in.
Three cheers for Microsoft!
Microsoft! Microsoft! Microsoft!

Hear! Hear!

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I have to agree here. Worse, because Google's attempted deal with Yahoo was monopolistic. Google does plenty of evil. And this is just business as usual for...MANY industries.

War? War exists because people are sheep. Because people believe whatever they're told to. Tell them saying M$ is cool, they'll do it. Tell them toGoose-step and exterminate Jews, they'll do it if the person telling them is persuasive enough.

You know, like a president elected on the platform of "Change!" and no policy to back it.

 

[Guest]

equal distribution of wealth is a very bad idea. imagine if a grocery store clark makes the same money as a brain surgeon. then who will study 25 years to become a brain surgeon? then everybodies life goal will be of being an unskilled labour. so there will be a time where everybody will be uneducated and dumb. plus when everebody will have equal wealth, then nothing new will be made because nobody will be rich enough to pay for the thousands of man hours used for innovation and manifacturing cutting edge products. the only thing that can happen is that the poorest people having the basic needs of life like food,healthcare, you have to earn everything else. remenber, we are not ants. more than 50% people are below average, only top 10% people are getting us through.

 

[Guest]

you know why google dominates in search?

because bing sucks.

 

[Guest]

"Google's attempted deal with Yahoo was monopolistic"

But Microsoft's deal with Yahoo is okay?

 

[Archean]

MS is not that big a player in search, but Google is, so frankly I saw no issue with the 'transaction' part of this deal, however, I think MS was thinking of planning of sinking 44 billion with not much 'profitable' return.

 

[Zilpha]

I tried to use Bing search for a while, but it just was more of an "Advertisement" than a "Search Engine" and despite my utter disdain for Google, I had to go back. I'm looking at the Bing site right now and its extraneous, it's just got images all over the place that take forever to load (and a second or two is too long for my tastes), and it's just "too much". Less is sometimes more, and historically Google has always been "less".

Now they are getting a little ridiculous with the insta searches that half the time leave my page blank, but that's another story. The fact is that Google dominates because they didn't overwhelm people with a bunch of cutesy bullshit graphics - they just gave us a functional search engine. I still applaud them for that. BUT - all the companies running around fighting each other is the biggest joke in the world.

Wars and BS like this exist because of the yardstick mentality.