“THIS is hyper-competition, make no mistake,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates said last year of the company’s growing rivalry with Google.
Since then the competition has reached fever pitch. This month Google accused Microsoft of violating anti-trust laws by setting the latest version of its browser, Internet Explorer, to default to its search engine MSN, although last week the US Justice Department found that the browser is not a threat to competition. For its part, Microsoft has announced that it will pour billions into a new version of its online software MSN, to put it in direct competition with Google.
This…
