Microsoft and Google chose not to renew their agreement to end the six-year truce
In 2015, Microsoft and Google reached a truce agreement to end nearly 20 patent infringement lawsuits between the two parties and avoid legal disputes. The two parties subsequently promised that they would no longer complain about each other to the regulators on a global scale. According to reports from the Financial Times and Bloomberg, the term of the agreement is until April this year, but the two parties have no intention of renewing the agreement. At the same time, the tightening of scrutiny of technology companies by regulatory agencies around the world is also one of the reasons why the two parties chose not to renew their contracts.
You must know that before signing the agreement, the struggle between Microsoft and Google was very fierce, especially during the heyday of Microsoft’s push for Windows Phone in 2013, the relationship between the two parties was extremely tense. Microsoft even attacked Google’s privacy policy through the Scroogled project. Later, due to the existence of this agreement, the competition between Microsoft and Google has been calm in the past few years. Although Microsoft was the second-ranked search engine at the time and was a competitor to Google, Microsoft has remained silent in the antitrust lawsuit filed by the US government against Google.
Recently, the relationship between the two sides has become tense again, and there are signs of a renewed war. Google earlier criticized Microsoft for trying to break the way the open web works, while Microsoft publicly supported a law in Australia that forced Google to pay news publishers for content, criticized Google’s control of the advertising market, and claimed that publishers were forced to use Google’s tools to make money for Google.
There are reports that the agreement between Microsoft and Google is also to improve cooperation between the two parties. Microsoft hoped to find a way to run Android applications on Windows, but it was obviously unsuccessful, and then turned to Amazon to let Android applications run on Windows 11.
