Ballmer: Google has 'monopoly' that authorities should discuss

Ballmer: Google has 'monopoly' that authorities should discuss
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has claimed Google has a monopoly in its business practices, and that it is worth of discussion with competition authorities.

His comments came during a presentation at Microsoft's financial analysts meeting. When responding to questions about how the Redmond giant can generate revenue from consumer services, Ballmer alluded to Google's alleged monopoly in the search space.



"They have this incredible, amazing, dare I say monopoly that we are the only person left on the planet trying to compete with," he said.

Microsoft's Bing service has grown to a 17.9 percent share of the search market in the United States, but still way behind Google at 67 percent. Most of Bing's gains have come from losses at other rival search engines other than Google.

"If we have exactly the same quality of algorithms, but a lot less scale in search advertising, we will get less revenue per search than Google does, which means they have more money to pay for distribution on Samsung devices, or Apple," Ballmer said, reports the Verge.

He then went on to explain that he believes the competition authorities may have a role to play.

"I do believe that Google's practices are worthy of discussion with competition authority, and we have certainly discussed them with competition authorities," said Ballmer. "I don't think their practices are getting less meritorious of discussion."



Written by: James Delahunty @ 20 Sep 2013 11:10
Tags
Microsoft Google Bing
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  • 9 comments
  • DarthMopar

    Hello, Pot....meet Kettle. Sounds like the former top dog is a sore loser. Suck it up cry baby, and offer something the consumers actually want instead the force-fed garbage you think we can't live without (Kinect, Windows 8, etc...)

    20.9.2013 11:21 #1

  • mukhis

    LOL, that was a good joke from M$ CEO. M$ office is, IMO, a perfect example of monopoly because of which no other office software could develop so powerful. M$ is even not putting its office in other mobile OS, isn't that a monopoly?

    ASUS G73JW | Intel Core i7-740QM, 1.73GHz | 8GB DDR3 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M, 1.5GB | OCZ 120GB SSD + Seagate 500GB Hybrid 7200rpm | 17.3" FHD/3D | Blu-ray Write | Win7Pro64

    20.9.2013 12:26 #2

  • SomeBozo

    Wow this is special :) Perhaps the reason Ba11mer is stepping down is more and issue he is becoming delusional? Or a polite way for the cheif executives telling him since Bill G has left he had ran the company into the ground. His leadership to bring out Win8, his lack to come up with phone that gets enough market share. balmer under his direction has taken a thriving company and started running into the ground, and now his only argument seems to be "The big kids are not playing nice.", well as the other two mentioned here, the shoe seems to be on the other foot and the roles have switched around, M$ doesn't have the option to rely on them being the only game in town anymore...

    Google search wins because for me it provides better results. I took the b1ng challenge and found google won 5 out of 5, what i thought was really funny, at the end of the comparison results, it said "Great news B1ng provided better results 0 out of 5 times."


    20.9.2013 13:02 #3

  • hearme0

    A monopoly is ONLY bad when choice is forcefully limited or eliminated by an entity..............

    Search engines are free to come and go as they please........Don't bitch about Google just because the majority of the world PREFERS the engine.

    20.9.2013 16:13 #4

  • nintenut

    I adore the fact that his solution to improving their profits is to undermine the better service instead of improving their own.

    I'm downright giddy to see you go, Mr. Ballmer.


    20.9.2013 19:05 #5

  • SomeBozo

    Originally posted by nintenut: I adore the fact that his solution to improving their profits is to undermine the better service instead of improving their own.

    I'm downright giddy to see you go, Mr. Ballmer.
    That is the point, look at how much they have spent and invested in "bingaling the annoying thing" :) M$ has done everything to get into the search engine space by even offering cash incentives to use M$ services in the form of cash backs... Yet people still prefer goog1e, seems to me M$ need to focus on improving there service rather than whining "goog1e is too good for us to compete with..."

    21.9.2013 00:56 #6

  • mukhis

    Originally posted by nintenut: undermine the better service instead of improving their own.
    well said. M$ has always said the same about apple which, in fact, offers a much better service, and has "something" good that others could not offer.

    ASUS G73JW | Intel Core i7-740QM, 1.73GHz | 8GB DDR3 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M, 1.5GB | OCZ 120GB SSD + Seagate 500GB Hybrid 7200rpm | 17.3" FHD/3D | Blu-ray Write | Win7Pro64

    21.9.2013 06:22 #7

  • deak91

    Quote:"They have this incredible, amazing, dare I say monopoly that we are the only person left on the planet trying to compete with, he said."


    i believe you pointed out what the public calls the shut the f up law .
    by the simple fact that you are trying to compete and Google is not suing you to stop you from competing

    everyone is given the chance to fail at something and m$ you are no exception

    21.9.2013 11:39 #8

  • Morreale

    Bing sucks... Was tortured by it with my old Nokia. 9/10 or more times I would search for something, it would bring up totally useless and sometimes completely unrelated information. Bing Maps was pretty bad too.

    I'll never use their services.

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    21.9.2013 12:55 #9

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