With the way Google is dominating the smartphone market with their Android platform, we guess their competitors such as Microsoft and Blackberry are left in the dust, leaving them none too happy about it. While Blackberry might be seeing a surge in sales, possibly due to their reputation from before, Windows Phone has yet to see massive rates of adoption and perhaps looking for a way to slow the Android behemoth down and play catch up, Microsoft has filed a formal complaint against Google to the European Commission on Google’s anti-competitive strategy with their Android dominance.
Filed as part of Fairsearch.org (whose members consist of big names such as Oracle, Nokia, Expedia and etc.), Microsoft claims that Google is using Android as a Trojan Horse to “deceive partners, monopolize the mobile marketplace, and control consumer data.” Considering that Google’s core competency would be its search engine, the collection and organizing of data, Microsoft’s complaint would seem like they’re complaining about Google as a whole, rather than just its Android operating system. Microsoft goes on to state that despite Android being an open-source operating system that manufacturers can install on their phones for free, if they want to include popular Google apps such as YouTube, Google Maps and etc., they have to install the entire suite and thus “disadvantage other providers”.
We’re not sure what the European Commission will do about this, or what Google has to say, but what do you guys think?
Filed in . Read more about Android, Google, Microsoft and Windows Phone.