February 26, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Google is a strong proponent of self regulation and governments staying out of the affairs of online companies. Except of course where its competitors are concerned, then it couldn’t be more in favour of government imposition and control. That’s why the search engine giant has decided to not only publically support the European Commission’s investigation of Internet Explorer (Google Chrome’s key competitor) but to actively participate in it.
In 2007 the EC upheld a complaint filed by minor search engine, Opera, that Microsoft had significantly undermined competition by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system – the OS that runs the overwhelming majority of the world’s computers. Google will be participating in the investigation as a third party, which means it will be offering technical assistance to the EC as they pursue the investigation. Mozilla Firefox are already involved in the case in a similar capacity.
You could forgive IE for feeling a little bit picked on here. However, it’s not difficult to see why Google are doing this. 2009 is set to be Chrome’s breakthrough year and a setback like this for their main rival could prove to be their best hope of stealing a march on IE.
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