Google LLC today accused Microsoft Corp. of “attacking rivals and lobbying for regulations that benefit their own interests” after Microsoft suggested the U.S. should more strongly regulate the search and advertising giant.

At the center of the companies’ dispute is the question of how Google should compensate the news outlets whose content it displays in search results. The House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust held a hearing about the matter today. Google and Microsoft published their criticisms of one another in statements published ahead of the hearing.

Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a written testimony to the subcommittee that “even though news helps fuel search engines, news organizations frequently are uncompensated or, at best, undercompensated for its use.” Smith also took aim at Google’s advertising business. Google, the Microsoft executive wrote, has created an expansive array of search and advertising products that have enabled it to become the dominant player in “virtually every corner” of the digital advertising market.

Smith concluded by endorsing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2021, a bill proposed earlier this week to regulate online platforms’ relationship with publishers. The bill would allow U.S. news organizations to collectively bargain with companies such as Google and Facebook Inc. on how their content is distributed.

Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, fired back at Microsoft in a blog post. “We are one of the world’s leading financial supporters of journalism,” the executive wrote. “We’ve shared billions of dollars in revenue with news publishers via our ad network, helped news organizations develop new business models and revenue streams, and committed $1 billion over the next three years to license news content through Google News Showcase.”

Walker went to state that Microsoft is “reverting to their familiar playbook of attacking rivals and lobbying for regulations that benefit their own interests.” Elaborating, the executive suggested that Microsoft’s statement today is an effort to distract from recent cybersecurity breaches that affected its systems and customers.

“Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at a moment when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of their customers — including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations — to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities,” Walker wrote. 

“We welcome the discussion of ways to create a better economic future for quality journalism, especially as the news media business model has been facing increased challenges for many years,” he added. “But proposals that would disrupt access to the open web (such as requiring payment for just showing links to websites) would hurt consumers, small businesses, and publishers.”

Microsoft and Google’s comments come a few weeks after Australia passed a law requiring the search giant, as well as Facebook, to pay for news content they display on their platforms. Shortly before the vote on the controversial legislation, Google inked content deals with multiple Australian news organizations to provide compensation for the right to show their stories to its users. 

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