The bitter battle of copyright: Google and Microsoft

[John Altenmueller]

Google is being charged with content copying by none other than... Microsoft. They are complaining that Google is copying far too much information, information that many people make a living on. Google's been trying to make the whole web searchable, everything from books to news to magazines.

Although Google has been found guilty in Belgium of infringing copyright laws, it claims that all the content they search now complies with international copyright law. They say that they make sure that the content providers get the revenue and benefits that they deserve.

From Google's humble start, it's come a long way. It now basically runs the internet, providing many web applications that provide similar functionality to many standalone applications. The idea of running your computer from the web is appealing for the most part, and perhaps this is what helped Google grow in popularity. So many services are provided that it's nearly inexcusable for someone not to know what something is while they're on the internet.

Anyway, back to the point. Let's just say that Microsoft has a good point here. Google is copying a lot of information, and most of the information obtained from Google is not actually from it, it's from other content providers. However, let me ask you this: since when did Microsoft start representing the general well-being of the content creators? Just when did Microsoft become a law-infringement prosecutor?

Something tells me that there's more than this involved. Since Google's massive and impressive growth, they've been presenting a significant challenge to Google, as we have seen in the past. This is Microsoft's way to get back at Google, in a legal way.

Most of the bases of charge are from Google's YouTube and Google Video services which offer a lot of videos infringing a copyright law-or-two. I think it's still stupid to go after Google though. Isn't it obvious that Google's trying to clean up the services? I don't know if it's just my opinion or what, but Google seems to be pretty responsive in terms of illegal content in their service.

Regardless of opinions, the attack will begin today from Microsoft. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

[tbbrick]

<sigh> It's Microsuck, what else could be expected. Anybody who does something well in the IT world and has the temerity to say no to the Dark Side of Redmond, hey presto, it's lawsuit time!!!

[tgreer]

Microsoft is absolutely in the right, though I'm skeptical of their motives, to be sure. Google's entire buisness and profit model is based on collecting content, without paying for it. Call it whatever you like, it is copyright infringement on a massive scale.

[jwenting]

Wouldn't be the first time Google interprets the law to mean that they can do whatever they want while other can do only what Google wants them to do.
It's time a large company with deep coffers stepped in, I doubt anyone (even the US government) at this point has the finances to deal with Google and the menace they pose to freedom of speech and privacy.

[lasher511]

might also have something to do with the fact that microshaft also own yahoo which has really become like a try hard google

[jwenting]

Yahoo doesn't have anything like "Google Library" which scans and puts online entire books without asking the publisher (Microsoft Press in this case) for permission...
Or a news service that rips entire articles from the sites of newspapers and publishes them as their own (with maybe a small link to the original somewhere).

Microsoft cannot be accused of stealing content because they don't.

[Chaky]

I say let them fight.