Microsoft back to it's old ways

Microsoft uses former exec as lawsuit springboard 'to stop' Google according to The Register

In a sign of just how anxious Microsoft is about the threat posed by Google in internet, corporate and desktop search, Bill Gates reportedly told Lee that chief executive Steve Ballmer has been looking for a reason to go after to Google. Lee's defection, to head-up Google's Chinese R&D facility, was clearly it.

"Steve is definitely going to sue you and Google over this," Gates said according to court filings reported in the The Seattle Times. "He has been looking for something just like this, someone at a VP level to go to Google. We need to do this to stop Google."

And it's not like this will be the first time that Microsoft will have used dirty tricks to stop a rival with better technology. Luckily this time the platform is not the desktop but the web, so Microsoft will find it harder to exploit their monopoly to stiffle competition. This doesn't mean that they aren't going to try, using their web browser monopoly rather than desktop operating system monopoly:

Users with search toolbars from Yahoo! and arch-rival Google have discovered that these vanish. Other third-party toolbars designed to block pop-ups or aid with form filling appear to be working normally, according to reports from Reg readers.