Title:
Microsoft Says Google Blocks Competition in Europe
Search Market
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
Microsoft has fought legal battles with officials in
Europe and the United States over competition in the
personal computer market. But at the end of March,
Microsoft accused Google of being anti-competitive.
A complaint to the European Commission accused
Google of unfairly controlling the Internet search
market in Europe. Google was already talking to the
commission about the issue and said it was happy to
explain to anyone how its business works.But Google
also faced other issues. Gmail users in China began
reporting problems with Google's e-mail service in
late February. The problems came as news of the
revolutions in the Arab world filled the Internet
and there were online calls for protests in
China.Google said the government was interfering
with its e-mail service. Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Jiang Yu called those accusations
unacceptable. But Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell
said, "This is a government blockage, carefully
designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."
Google is the world leader in Internet search. But
in China, the biggest search engine is Baidu. And in
late March, China's largest Internet media company,
Sina, dropped Google's search engine from its
website. Sina said it would use its own technology.
An estimated four hundred fifty million Chinese are
online -- about half of all Internet users in
Asia.In two thousand ten, Google said a cyberattack
from China had attempted to get information from the
Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Google
also expressed concerns about censorship. So Google
relocated its Chinese search engine from the
mainland to Hong Kong. In March, Google also faced
new problems at home. A federal judge in New York
ruled against its plan to put millions of books
online. Google wants to create a digital library of
all the world's books. It reached a one hundred
twenty-five million dollar deal in two thousand
eight with groups representing writers and
publishers. Google agreed to create a system to pay
copyright holders when their works are used online.
But Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed
settlement. He said it would give Google monopoly
control of the book search market. But he left open
the possibility for a new plan.On a similar issue,
Baidu in China said it removed almost three million
documents from its library. Writers have complained
that Baidu did not have permission for their works
to appear on its document-sharing site. For VOA
Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can read
and listen to our programs about business and other
subjects at voaspecialenglish.com. And click on The
Classroom for interactive exercises for English
learners.
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is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
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