Microsoft and Google withdraw mutual complaints from regulators

Microsoft and Google have decided to withdraw pending mutual complaints with regulators. The companies would also have agreed to settle future disputes among themselves, without the intervention of a national watchdog.

“Our companies compete strongly against each other, but we want to do this through products, not legal process,” a Google spokesperson told Recode. Neither company would have made any product commitments to the other.

Both Google and Microsoft confirm that the agreement had been in the making for some time. The company from Redmond therefore says it will not take sides in the case that the European Commission has started against Google. This concerns, among other things, the fact that Google supplies certain apps in Android and thus abuses its dominant market position. Microsoft received a somewhat similar complaint from the Commission several years ago.

In addition, at the end of last year, Microsoft withdrew its support from the Fairsearch organization, which is mainly aimed at limiting Google’s monopoly in the search engine market. At the time, this decision was already seen as a possible rapprochement between the two companies. Fairsearch was therefore one of the parties that filed a complaint about Android. In 2014, the companies decided not to file lawsuits against each other for patent infringements.