[ti:Microsoft Says Google Blocks Competition in Europe Search Market] [ar:Steve Ember] [al:Economics Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English [00:02.99]Economics Report. [00:04.96]Microsoft has fought legal battles [00:07.74]with officials in Europe [00:09.56]and the United States [00:11.23]over competition [00:12.85]in the personal computer market. [00:15.94]But now Microsoft is accusing Google of [00:19.03]being anti-competitive. [00:21.50]A complaint to the European Commission [00:24.38]accuses Google of unfairly controlling [00:27.62]the Internet search market in Europe. [00:31.62]Google is already talking [00:33.59]to the commission about the issue [00:35.66]and says it is happy to explain [00:38.55]to anyone how its business works. [00:41.68]Google also faces other issues. [00:45.12]Gmail users in China began [00:48.20]reporting problems with Google's [00:50.58]e-mail service in late February. [00:53.57]The problems came as news [00:56.15]of the revolutions in the Arab world [00:59.24]filled the Internet and there were [01:01.66]online calls for protests in China. [01:05.14]Google said the government [01:07.42]was interfering with its e-mail service. [01:10.82](SOUND) [01:13.65]Last week, Foreign Ministry [01:15.21]spokeswoman Jiang Yu called [01:17.20]the accusations unacceptable. [01:19.47]But Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said [01:23.47]the company stood by its earlier comments. [01:26.80]JESSICA POWELL: "This is [01:27.91]a government blockage, [01:28.62]carefully designed to look like [01:29.63]the problem is with Gmail." [01:30.95]Google is the world leader [01:33.38]in Internet search. [01:34.90]But in China, the biggest [01:37.27]search engine is Baidu. [01:39.64]And this week, China's largest [01:42.38]Internet media company, Sina, [01:44.40]dropped Google's search engine [01:47.33]from its website. [01:48.60]Sina says it is using [01:51.38]its own technology. [01:53.05]An estimated four hundred fifty [01:56.28]million Chinese are online -- about [01:59.87]half of all Internet users in Asia. [02:03.46]Last year, Google said a cyberattack [02:08.11]from China had attempted to get information [02:10.96]from the Gmail accounts [02:13.53]of human rights activists. [02:15.91]Google also expressed concerns [02:19.05]about censorship. [02:20.92]So Google relocated [02:22.89]its Chinese search engine [02:25.67]from the mainland to Hong Kong. [02:28.20]The company is also facing [02:31.09]new problems at home. [02:33.00]A federal judge in New York [02:35.33]has ruled against its plan [02:37.86]to put millions of books online. [02:41.30]Google wants to create [02:43.58]a digital library of all the world's books. [02:47.58]It reached a one hundred [02:49.95]twenty-five million dollar deal [02:52.32]in two thousand eight with groups [02:54.95]representing writers and publishers. [02:58.34]Google agreed to create a system [03:01.68]to pay copyright holders [03:04.17]when their works are used online. [03:07.04]But Judge Denny Chin rejected [03:10.84]the proposed settlement. [03:12.67]He said it gives Google monopoly [03:16.21]control of the book search market. [03:18.99]But he left open the possibility [03:21.62]for a new plan. [03:23.34]On a similar issue, Baidu says [03:27.14]it has removed almost three million [03:30.06]documents from its library. [03:32.38]Writers have complained that Baidu [03:35.83]did not have permission [03:37.55]for their works to appear [03:39.51]on its document-sharing site. [03:42.65]And that's the VOA Special English [03:46.55]Economics Report, [03:47.87]written by Mario Ritter [03:49.78]and available online at 51voa.com. [03:54.74]I'm Steve Ember.