Monopoly Cops May Find Google Too Popular to Bust

Google antitrust complaints linked to rival

(NEWSER) - As Google faces a slew of antitrust suits from US and European companies with connections to rival Microsoft, the search engine giant believes Microsoft is "scouring court dockets around the world looking for complaints against Google into which they can inject themselves," a Google spokesman tells the Wall Street Journal . Microsoft denies waging a proxy battle against Google, but confirms that it is frequently contacted by and "encourages" parties with complaints about Google, according to a Microsoft spokesman. More»

Software giant sics European regulators on search giant

(NEWSER) - The war between Microsoft and Google just ratcheted up a notch: In its first-ever antitrust complaint against a competitor, Microsoft asked European regulators today to go after the search giant. Google is stunting competition and attempting to “entrench its dominance” on the Web, Microsoft complained to the European Commission. In a blog post explaining the filing, a Microsoft exec says Google has “engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers.” More»

$25M search deals with Microsoft, Google push it barely into black

(NEWSER) - Twitter will be marginally profitable this year thanks to deals with Google and Microsoft that open up the social networking site’s streams to those companies’ search engines. The agreement with Google is worth about $15 million, while the Microsoft partnership should net Twitter around $10 million. The short message site is thought to have operating expenses between $20 million and $25 million. More»

Helpful features make Microsoft's search engine more than a Google copy

(NEWSER) - It's easy to mock Bing as Microsoft's latest attempt to rip off a competitor. Bloggers, in fact, have christened the search engine "But It's Not Google." That’s actually true, writes David Pogue in the New York Times. "In many ways, Bing is better." Here's how:

• When you hover your mouse over a search result, Bing opens a pop-up window that displays the first few paragraphs. Saves time clicking on dead ends.

(NEWSER) - Bing's second week wasn't such a bad one, CNET reports. Microsoft’s brand-new search engine has eaten into the market share of its competition, tacking on a 1% gain in both number of searchers and results returned last week, putting it up about 3% in both categories since launch: It captured 16.7% of search users and returned 12.1% of all results pages. More»