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It has been alleged that Microsoft’s Washington lobbyist, Fred Humphries, has been hosting regular meetings with the vendor’s consultants to discuss how to best discredit internet search giant Google.
According to DailyFinance, the meetings congregate as often as once a week and have earned the title ‘Screw Google’ meetings from multiple sources, due to their aggressive focus.
“Microsoft is at the centre of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,” said an anonymous source. “The effort is designed make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.
“This is textbook Microsoft. Microsoft has got some of the best, highest-priced lobbyists that money can buy in Washington.”
However, although Microsoft spokesperson Ginny Terzano acknowledges the existence of policy meetings, she vehemently denies that the aim is to discredit Google.
“This is absurd,” she told DailyFinance. “While Google is a healthy competitor, Fred is focused on advancing policies that benefit our partners and consumers, and not running meetings of the type you describe.”
These revelations are the latest in a number of events that indicate increasing tensions between the two companies. After Google announced that it would be creating a new operating system, Microsoft made its Office suite available as an online application, launched the Bing search engine and formed an alliance with Yahoo!
