SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google Inc. as his company strives to lessen its rival’s dominance of Internet search.
In an appearance last week at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google has done a number of things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.
“We are expressing some of the issues and frustrations we see” with antitrust regulators, Ballmer said. “Sometimes (it’s) unsolicited, sometimes because we have been asked.”
Google, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment last week, has said its actions are aimed at providing better experiences for Web surfers and advertisers.
Microsoft already has helped convince U.S. regulators that Google would break antitrust laws in two proposed deals: a search advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc. that was scrapped in 2008 and a digital books settlement that still needs federal court approval.
Ciao, an online shopping comparison service owned by Microsoft, also has filed an antitrust complaint against Google in Europe. Regulators there say they are looking into those allegations and similar ones made by two other sites, Foundem and ejustice.fr.
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has had its own troubles with regulators.
Its bundling of personal computer software triggered a court dispute with the U.S. Justice Department that culminated in the company’s changing the way it packages software with its Windows operating system. Microsoft later tussled with EU regulators, too.
Since Microsoft’s own antitrust showdown started in the late 1990s, more people are relying on their computers chiefly as a conduit to the Internet.
The evolution has turned Google’s Internet gateway and other online services into a major threat to Microsoft, which has tried to respond by investing billions of dollars in search technology.
Microsoft has made little headway so far. Even with some progress since unveiling an upgraded search engine called Bing nine months ago, Microsoft remains a distant third in the U.S. search market.
Ballmer is counting on Microsoft’s 10-year search partnership with No. 2 Yahoo to help close the gap.
When the alliance kicks in late this year, Microsoft will start processing search requests on Yahoo’s Web site and pay most of the ad revenue to its new partner. As Microsoft fields more search requests, Ballmer expects the company to collect more data that it could analyze and use to help improve search results.
That, in turn, could help the company lure away Google users.
“There is an advantage to having the power of two, as opposed to the power of one,” Ballmer said.
When asked whether he thought Microsoft would overtake Google in Internet search, Ballmer indicated it probably will be a long time before there’s a changing of the guard.
“I don’t know how old I will be when that will happen,” said Ballmer, 53.
