Who’s winning the slap fight between Microsoft and Google? Perhaps Apple.
First, a recap. After software giant Microsoft complained about search kingpin Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened a probe last month. Score one for Bill Gates.
Now Google is complaining to the U.S. Justice Department that the built-in desktop search features of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista, hinder a competing product from Google. While the feds aren’t biting, attorneys general in several states are now promising to look into the practice. Chalk one up for Google.
Apple’s Steve Jobs, meanwhile, is free to do things Microsoft can only dream of doing–and Google’s Eric Schmidt isn’t about to complain. Apple users may be disappointed after the biggest news out of Monday’s Apple developers conference was new Web browser software for Windows. But the move is only Apple’s latest thrust into software that Microsoft fought bitterly to control in the late 1990s.
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