Google Highlights Microsoft Role In EU Antitrust Probe

The European Commission, the EU's antitrust authority, confirmed that "it has received three complaints against Google which it is examining," but did not name the parties that made the complaints. But in a Wednesday blog post, Google Senior Competition Counsel Julia Holtz wrote that the EC had notified Mountain View, Calif.-based Google that the three companies making the complaints were "UK price comparison site, Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing."

In addition to Ciao, a German search site that Microsoft recently acquired, Holtz noted that Foundem is "a member of an organization called ICOMP which is funded partly by Microsoft." Foundem on Wednesday was featured on ICOMP's homepage in its "Member Spotlight." ICOMP also has a list of council members and signatories published online.

ICOMP, or the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, is a London-based industry association that lists its mission as promoting "widespread support for principles that are essential to a healthy online environment," with specific goals of encouraging "competition, transparency, data privacy and respect for intellectual property protection as well as the adoption of best practices to promote creativity, innovation, safety and trust."

On its homepage, ICOMP states that it is "funded by member contributions as well as sponsorship from Microsoft." The public relations firm Burson-Marsteller "acts as its secretariat."

Holtz does not make any specific comments in her blog post about the nature of Microsoft's role in the opening of an EC investigation into Google other than to point out the Redmond, Wash.-based software company's ties -- arguably fairly loose in the case of Foundem -- to two of the three complaints.

But in a Wednesday conference call with journalists, Holtz was quoted by media as saying, "Microsoft is our competitor and that explains many actions."

Microsoft issued its own statement Wednesday, saying ""we believe it's natural for competition officials to look at online advertising, given how important it is to the development of the Internet and the dominance of one player."

Meanwhile, the spotlight on ICOMP, and in particular the prominent roles of Microsoft and Burson-Marsteller in that association's structure, may remind some people of allegations published by the tech industry gossip blog Valleywag last April.

According to Valleywag, Burson-Marsteller and Microsoft were involved in a "secret campaign ... to throw dust into Google's gears" that included Burson-Marsteller "stirring up antitrust trouble for Google at Microsoft's behest."

A Burson-Marsteller representative denied that his PR firm was lobbying for Microsoft against Google, Valleywag reported in an update to its original post.