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.