WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google and Microsoft are pulled by knives.
Driven in part by pressure from lawmakers and regulators over the extraordinary power the two tech companies wield over American life, the California-based search engine giant and Washington-based software company are struggling to throw each other under the bus.
Tensions between Microsoft Corp and Alphabet-owned Google have been simmering for a while, but the rivalry has become unusually public in recent days as executives from both companies have become on the defensive due to competing crises.
Google is facing bipartisan complaints – and journalistic anger – over its role in taking away ad revenue from the media industry, the subject of an antitrust hearing in Congress on Friday.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is under scrutiny for its role in back-to-back cyber security breaches.
In the former case, the same alleged Russian hackers who compromised Texas software company SolarWinds Corp also took advantage of Microsoft’s cloud software to break into some of the company’s customers. The second, revealed on March 2, saw Chinese hackers exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities to suck up emails from Microsoft customers around the world.
Microsoft President Brad Smith addressed lawmakers on Friday in an antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary and would fire a shot at Google. operations and pay Google money, ”said excerpts from his testimony published by Axios.
Google fired back, saying Microsoft’s “renewed interest in attacking us follows the SolarWinds attack and at a time when they have admitted tens of thousands of their customers, including US government agencies, NATO allies, banks, profit organizations., telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and presumably news organizations – to be actively hacked through major Microsoft vulnerabilities. “
Reporting by Raphael Satter, editing by Nick Zieminski