back to article Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone

Microsoft has admitted that Windows Phone 8 doesn't work as well with some of the internet's most popular properties as do other smartphone platforms, but it has pinned the blame on a surprising culprit: apparently, it's all Google's fault. In a blog post on Wednesday, Microsoft VP and deputy general counsel Dave Heiner said …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now if only...

    ...Google could create a Youtube Android app that doesn't suck...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Now if only...

      Not sure what Android Youtube app you have, but mine is brilliant. Turn the phone on it's side, fullscreen.

      Nice...

      1. Stuporhero

        Try it on a tablet

        No fullscreen! Why Google WHY!?!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google should propose to Microsoft a $15/device charge for YouTube access

    Let's see how Microsoft like those numbers. Though given Windows Phone sales, it wouldn't really amount to much.

    Gotta love it when Microsoft start bellyaching now that they're on the losing wicket. Props to Google for yanking their chain.

    1. Adam 1

      Re: Google should propose to Microsoft a $15/device charge for YouTube access

      $30 seems a bit steep to me.

      1. Stuporhero

        Re: Google should propose to Microsoft a $15/device charge for YouTube access

        They should match the cost of Microsoft's patents

  3. Gordon 8
    Flame

    Standard practice

    It would seem to be standard practice to screw with another IT company and not make life easy for them.

    Same really, I have a Lumia 900 & 820.

    820 much improved over the 900.

    Have seen a couple of iPhone users play with it and had some good comments.

    Yes, you pay your money & you take your choice. Me, I'm happy with Windows phone, but would like a better youtube app (among a few others)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Standard practice

      Metrotube is pretty good.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Standard practice

      I had a 820 and it was the worst phone I have ever had. It was chock full of software bugs (like handset being locked during calls, making touch-tone interaction impossible), it regularly locked up at the end of a call, and I couldn't hang up, needing a hard reset.

      The battery life was woeful, and the applications non-existent.

      It went back and I got a S3 instead. SO much better, worlds apart.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Standard practice

        That's not my experience with an 820, I got one just before Christmas and I think it's an excellent device, I've not seen any of your problems. Were you holding it correctly?

        Seriously though, do you mean the Nokia Lumia 820? Because mine (Phones4U/Vodafone) doesn't behave like this.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Standard practice

          Don't worry AC, the previous AC was just Barry Shitpeas. He always claims to have owned the Windows Phone you're happy with and found it was crap and then bought an Android phone which fellated him all the way home, gave him the winning lottery numbers and had an app which made a girl actually glance at him without vomiting.

        2. Stuporhero

          Re: Standard practice

          "Were you holding it correctly?"

          Wait, are you Steve Jobs' reincarnation?

  4. James O'Brien
    Thumb Down

    Same functionality as Droid and Apple?

    From my experience with the Youtube app on both Android and iOS they are both crap. Load slow as hell, don't show the same videos (don't get it since some videos are marked as not available if I try to view them on my phone while the same video is available on the browser or my PC), tends to decide to play a video in what appears to be 240 resolution for no reason when I have a great WiFi connection and so on. From the sounds of it Google is just making app comparable in quality to the current ones available to the competitors.

    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

      Re: Same functionality as Droid and Apple?

      I'd noticed the fact that there were videos missing from the Android YouTube app compared to the same search on a desktop. This also appears to be the case on the YouTube support incorporated into Blu Ray players and SmartTVs.

      I think that it is the case that if the YouTube app does not think the correct container or codec is installed on the device, it won't display the video in the search.

      I think it is possible to get YouTube in a browser to tell you the format of any video, but I can't remember how, and I can't check as YouTube is blocked/filtered at work.

      1. Ben 47

        Re: Same functionality as Droid and Apple?

        Don't think it's got anything to do with the video format

        Google have got a syndication policy which allows some channels to restrict where the videos are available http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=2453875

  5. ChrisInAStrangeLand
    FAIL

    We demand you pay us extortionate fees to make your free mail service work on our shitty non-standards compliant clusterfuck because Antitrust.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Pot and Kettle?

    There is a certain satisfaction in seeing Microsoft complain about practices that they apparently haven't been averse to using themselves, but that ignores an important point : it's the poor user who is forced to act as cannon-fodder in a commercial war between corporations.

    If a Windows Phone user is being treated unfairly by Google then it is just plain wrong. For that reason I hope that if the accusations are true, Google are forced to play fair.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pot and Kettle?

      From a company that talks about open source (ie. freedom to use something) it just shows how their talk of open source, standards and so on are just a smokescreen.

      They're a money grubbing monopolist at heart just like any other. As Schmidt made clear recently with his letter about tax avoidance and not being confused about it.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Pot and Kettle?

        All your thoughts in searches belong to Google and Bing and Baidu and Yandex and and and any engine aiding search.

        Challenge them to provide the dream information you seek. It may transpire you be Sole Source Core Supplier.

        Thus are Markets Captured and Routed, Decimated and Destroyed with SMARTR Future Content of Fabulous Intellectual Property Worth with Bounty a Princely Reward that Enables Leads into Controls of HyperRadioProActive IT.

        That is the private virtual defence and protection sector testing new transparent programming protocols of full disclosure and admission, in a novel running program with SpookdD Intelligence Services.

        Well, ok, it is at least a private contractor in the private virtual defence and protection sector testing new transparent programming protocols of full disclosure and admission, in a novel running program with SpookdD Intelligence Services.

    2. John Angelico
      Stop

      Re: Pot and Kettle?

      You said:

      "For that reason I hope that if the accusations are true, Google are forced to play fair."

      Only as long as the case is not allowed to drag on longer than MS dragged out their defence. After all, fair's fair, right?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pot and Kettle?

      'If a Windows Phone user is being treated unfairly by Google then it is just plain wrong.'

      The tough part is finding one!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pot and Kettle?

        Oh look! There's one!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Pot and Kettle?

          And there's another one!

    4. LosD
      FAIL

      Re: Pot and Kettle?

      "If a Windows Phone user is being treated unfairly by Google then it is just plain wrong. For that reason I hope that if the accusations are true, Google are forced to play fair."

      It's called "You IDIOT, you bought a WINDOWS PHONE", and the pain is completely deserved.

  7. Mikel
    Pint

    Sauce for the goose

    Lots to thumbs up in here.

    Would worry for the users, but from what they post online they're all a bunch of jerks.

  8. Belardi

    When is MS Office for iOS and Android coming out?

    When MS works on MS-Office for other mobile devices, then they have a leg to stand on... otherwise, they should just shut up.

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: When is MS Office for iOS and Android coming out?

      MS Office for smartphones? Good heavens, no. The only thing that would do would be anti-virus protection - the system would be so overloaded with useless bloat a virus wouldn't stand a chance.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: When is MS Office for iOS and Android coming out?

      This isn't about producing specific software for a specific platform, this is about actively preventing functionality that is available to everyone else from one competitor.

  9. Eguro
    Meh

    EEhmm..

    If I steal from a shop (or anywhere else), does that mean that it's now no longer illegal to steal from me?

    Even if I get caught and get punished.

    Just wondering, cause that's what a lot of the previous comments seem to imply.

    (And now, bring the downvotes. There goes my up/down ratio)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What goes around, comes around.

    Never a truer word said.

    Be careful what you do to people at work, home or elsewhere.

  11. Phoenix50
    FAIL

    You people are hilarious. If we take your ridiculous posturing to the extreme, let's have Microsoft release a patch that blocks access to all of Google's services from your computer.

    That' almost 1 billion desktops, laptops and Servers out there who can't access Google.

    What's that you say? Unfair?

    Deal with it.

    1. Andrew Jones 2

      Well..... no - not really - that is completely different. We already had access to Google services - a patch to remove access to Google services would be a different beast entirely. We don't even know yet why Microsoft have been denied access to the meta data - and it's more than likely that it is a terms of service violation type of thing rather than a "we don't like you and we wont give you what you what" response.

    2. Stuporhero

      This is just idiotic. The difference here is that would definitely be monopolistic (Windows being pretty much shoehorned onto nearly every non-apple PC by a trade "agreement") as opposed to hardware manufacturers being allowed to make all types of mobile devices (except Nokia now obviously) and people picking what they like best.

  12. chiller

    An ounce of sympathy in the house for MS anyone? .... hello? ........

    ..........................tumbleweed...............................

  13. Robert E A Harvey

    for glod's sake!

    I could stand still with my arms folded across my chest and undermine windows phone. It's automatic.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Might one inquire

    If the nice folks at Microsoft will complain to themselves about the reduced functionality of Windows 8 ? And possibly take the matter to court ?

  15. mark l 2 Silver badge

    "Microsoft has been forced to deliver an app that's really nothing more than a repackaged version of the YouTube website running in a browser "

    That sounds better than the Youtube apps i have seen on iOS, TIVO and Android. I set up a playlist of videos on my PC through the browser but when i login from one of the Youtube apps half the videos on the playlist are not available.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    How is it Anti-trust?

    They support Apple, because they have a significant marketshare.

    Microsoft are NOWHERE with Windows Phone, and their marketshare is shrinking. so Google therefore don't have a requirement to support them. If they do, I demand that Google also support my Mobile phone OS I am making in my bedroom.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How is it Anti-trust?

      They aren't asking Google to support them, they're asking Google to make the metadata that is available to everyone else available to them. You would be right to ask them to make that available to you for your OS...

      As for your assertion that the WP market is failing, this would suggest not: http://bgr.com/2012/12/21/windows-phone-growth-analysis-262829/

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How is it Anti-trust?

        The use of superlatives and cherry-picked stats in that article is fascinating. What a goldmine of objective rational analysis.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How is it Anti-trust?

          It's still better than Barry's analysis which will only let Android be reviewed as good in any way.

  17. Crisp

    Meet the new monopoly

    Same as the old monopoly.

  18. MrXavia
    FAIL

    Surely its up to Google who they sell to? and who they give 'special' access to meta data to?

    If I ran a pub I could bar anyone I want, if I run a shop, I can refuse to sell to someone..

    If I run a free service, I can choose the people who access it...

    Google don't force people to use google, they don't say you can't use another search engine, or you can't use another video streaming service...

    If they restricted youtube to only Android, then I would say yes its an abuse, but they don't

    1. Rams
      Pint

      Are you sure?

      If you don't provide the same service to everyone inside your bar, this is a bit unfair no?

      Some people might have a dream that one day ...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Err...

      No, it's not up to Google for the reason that they have a monopolistic (or as near as makes no difference) position on Internet video serving, and that they make the data available to everyone else, with one exception. This is an obvious abuse of their position as the provider of such a service.

  19. David Simpson 1
    Devil

    Where is office for Android then ???

  20. Mark Allread
    Facepalm

    Microsoft haters

    They're an excitable bunch aren't they? With all their "M$" stuff...

  21. adam payne

    Microsoft has been trying to squeeze competitors out of their markets for years, how ironic.

    1. Roger Greenwood
      Pint

      Stages of competition

      Look at the stages to go through:-

      1. Ignore

      2. Ridicule

      3. Fight

      4. Win!

      Looks like MS just hit stage 3 proper in their competition with Google.

      Trebles all round.

      1. RyokuMas
        Happy

        Re: Stages of competition

        @Roger - be prepared for a flurry of downvotes for the fact that you included "win" as the point #4 on the list, then suggested that Microsoft are only one step away from it...

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