Microsoft learns how to play the EU competition card

June 12, 2008 by Richard Waters
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/
Microsoft learns how to play the EU competition card
There was something sweetly ironic in the not-so-veiled threat that a Microsoft-led lobbying group flashed at Google today. The message: Microsoft is learning how to turn the European anti-trust apparatus that has caused it so much grief to its own advantage.
The group in question, called ICOMP, claims to be an industry association formed to address “concerns related to online marketplaces.” Its close links to Microsoft were once less transparent, but these days it carries the following disclosure on its Website: “Microsoft is ICOMP’s initial sponsor. Burson-Marsteller [PR advisers to Microsoft] acts as its Secretariat.”
This was the group through which Microsoft directed much of its lobbying effort in both Washington DC and Brussels against Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. So when the European Commission today published its detailed reasoning for allowing the deal to go ahead, ICOMP was quick to respond. Its most telling comment:
In its decision, the Commission identified several market segments where Google has a high and even increasing degree of market power… ICOMP will seek to help build a consensus of views as to how this will affect the market going forward and in particular what forms of behaviour may give rise to competition concerns.
Sounds familiar? That’s exactly the approach taken by ECIS, the IBM-led consortium that has been so successful in stirring Europe’s trust-busters into action against Microsoft.