Business Insider/Julie Bort
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks that Google is a monopoly and that the government should step in and do something about it.
So he said on Thursday at Microsoft's analyst conference in Bellevue, Wash. He was discussing how so few companies have grown really huge by offering cloud services to consumers, even though there are a few up-and-comers like Facebook.
Of all the markets Microsoft plays in, and it pretty much hits them all (devices, software, cloud for consumers and the enterprise), Ballmer says that making money in consumer cloud services is the toughest.
"Google does it. They have, dare I say, a monopoly. We are the only company on the planet still trying to compete with it," he said.
And Microsoft is pressuring the authorities to investigate Google when it comes to search:
This [search] is a scale game because the market for advertising is auction-based economics. If we have exactly the same quality of algorithms but less scale in search advertising we get less revenue per search than Google which means they have more money to pay for distribution on Samsung or Apple. Rumor is they pay each $1 to $3 billion a year for distributing their search products. We have to generate volume to step up.
I believe that Google's practices are worthy of discussion with competition authority. And we have certainly discuss them with competition authorities. I don't think their practices are getting less merit tortuous of discussion. We highlighted some bad practices in advertising and discussions with regulators, the bundling they're doing with You Tube and Google Maps. I think they need pressure from competition. I think they need pressure in the marketplace with product, with investment, with scale. How do we get scale? On our own devices or on somebody with whom we're closely aligned.
That's rich and ironic coming Ballmer. Microsoft was under scrutiny in the U.S. for a decade after the Department of Justice declared it was a monopoly and was violating anti-trust law by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. As late as March of this year, EU regulators were still fining Microsoft for not keeping its anti-trust agreement with them.
Still, Microsoft could get its way. All kinds of government agencies have been listening and saber rattling around Google, threatening investigations into this or that. Some of them have ended more-or-less in Google's favor, like an FTC investigation in January that found Google was not abusing its search engine to favor advertisers.
史蒂夫.鲍尔默--Google是垄断企业,需要政府进行监管调查
商业内幕/朱莉.伯特
微软CEO 史蒂夫.鲍尔默
微软CEO 史蒂夫.鲍尔默认为Google是一个垄断企业,政府应该进行干涉和有所作为才行。
星期四,在贝尔维尤.沃什,他在微软的分析研究会议上如是说。他讨论说有那么少数的公司怎样通过给消费者提供云服务已经逐渐成为巨头,尽管已有少数很有前途的公司如FaceBook。
偏偏就连微软参与的市场中, Google也几乎对他们造成了严重的影响(设备,软件,消费者云和企业),鲍尔默说在消费者的云服务中赚钱是最困难的。
“Google就行。他们是,我敢这样说,一个垄断企业。在这个星球上,我们是唯一一个仍然尝试与其竞争的公司。”他说。
同时微软迫使官方机构来调查Google关于搜索方面的问题:[搜索]是一个规模游戏,因为广告市场是一个基于竞价的经济.如果我们确实有相同质量的算法,但是在广告搜索中只有较小的规模,这样我们每一次的搜索获得的收益都比Google少,那意味着他们有更多的钱来支付在三星和苹果的财政分配上。传闻他们为搜索产品分配费用上每年花费了10到30亿美元。这样我们不得不做大量的部署准备。
我相信Google的做法是值得与竞争监管委员会一起讨论的。而且我们确实已经和他们讨论过这个问题了。我不认为他们的做法会使漫长曲折的讨论变得更有价值和进展。我们在与监管机构讨论中强调了广告中一些不好的做法,就像他们对You Tube和Google地图捆绑一样。我认为他们需要从竞争中获取压力。我觉得他们在产品,投资,规模的市场交易中需要有压力。那我们怎样获得规模呢?就在我们自己的设备中或者在我们关系密切的同盟伙伴中。
这就是富有和具有讽刺意味的鲍尔默。微软因为在windows操作系统中捆绑IE浏览器从而违反了反垄断法同时被美国联邦司法部宣称其为垄断企业之后的十年来,一直处在美国的监查之下。早在今年三月,欧盟监管机构就因为微软一直不遵守他们之间的反垄断法协议而进行处罚。
尽管如此,微软仍有自己的办法。所有的政府机构已经在Google身边监听和恫吓,威胁会有这个或者那个的调查。他们其中一些几乎已经终止了来自于Google的支持,如一月份公平贸易委员会的调查中发现,Google并没有滥用它的搜索引擎来支持照顾广告客户。
沉森心曰:
微软以前也是操作系统上的垄断巨头,现在却因Google的崛起而互相指责,真是五十步笑百步啊。鲍尔默那因市场份额丢失而急红脸的神态,真让人感到好笑和无奈。原来看似不可一世,坚若磐石的巨头微软,也会面临轰然倒塌的危机局面啊。这真是世道无常啊(凡事变幻无常,唯一不变的自然定律就是“变”)!
巨头们,请吸取经验教训啊!
Microsoft used to be a monopoly, but now is charging Google with it's growth. Ballmer is so anxious for losing the market share that makes his face red. It really makes people feel funny and helpless. And no one will guess that even as strong as iron like Microsoft will face the threat of collapsing one day. Everything impermanent as change is the only constant in nature!