Google teams up with Opera to challenge Microsoft supremacy

26 February 2009

Google yesterday sought permission from the European Commission to be a party in EC's antitrust investigations against software giant Microsoft.

''Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers,'' said Sundar Pichai, who is responsible for the development of Google's own Chrome browser.

Regulators have been investigating Microsoft for more than a year, following a complaint by the makers of the Norwegian web browser Opera, and another from the industry group, European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), which accused Microsoft of unfairly obstructing the ability of rival applications to work on its operating systems.

They say the practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows put competitors at an unfair disadvantage.

Google's move to join Opera in confronting the software giant's dominance of the internet browser market represents a significant escalation in 'browser wars' and the battle over how users view the internet.

The charges are similar to those Microsoft faced in 2004, when it lost a European anti-trust case and was forced to sell a version of Windows without its Media Player software. Microsoft was hit by a fine of 497 million euros ($688.84 million) in September last year after Europe's second-highest court dismissed the company's appeal against an EU antitrust decision, taken in 2004.