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Microsoft accuses Google of secretly funding regulatory astroturf campaign
Microsoft is accusing Google of funding a proxy campaign designed to discredit it in the eyes of regulatory authorities and policymakers in the European Union and beyond.
According to Microsoft, Google hired a lobbying agency in Europe to create and operate the organization, and recruited “a handful of” European cloud providers to appear as the public face of the soon-to-launch campaign. We and many others believe that Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices lock-in customers and create negative downstream effects that impact cybersecurity, innovation, and choice,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget, and pointed us to fourseparateblogposts on the matter. As for why Google would potentially go to the extraordinary lengths of funding an astroturf campaign, Microsoft points to the recent uptick in regulatory scrutiny of the company’s search, advertising and mobile app store businesses.
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