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Summary
- Google and Microsoft entered a feud after Microsoft sided with Government laws supporting payments to media firms.
- Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker highlighted that Google plans to spend USD 1 billion to license content from media firms.
Tech giants Google and Microsoft stood at loggerheads as Google accuses Microsoft of siding with Government laws to undercut a rival when the company itself is fighting concerns regarding the data breach. On Friday, Google took a dig at Microsoft through a blog post stating concerns about the vulnerabilities existing in the latter’s system.
This came after Microsoft President Brad Smith slammed Google for standing in the way of the growth of media organizations. Microsoft President Brad Smith continued to bash Google based on claims of eating away ad revenue on which newsgroups are dependent.
Microsoft’s attacking stance was released through a testimony for the House Committee on the Judiciary investigating antitrust and commercial aspects of competition for a free and diverse press.
Google’s Response
Tech pioneer Google claimed that Microsoft’s allegations were an attempt to deflect from the main issue regarding the company’s own software privacy controls. Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, pointed to Microsoft’s vulnerabilities in a blog post.
Recent media payment laws in Australia urged Google to issue a threat to exit the country. However, Microsoft was content in supporting the laws made by the Australian government and took a jibe at its competitor Google for not supporting media firms through fair payments.
In the wake of these allegations, Google claimed that they plan to spend over USD 1 billion over the next three years to license content from media firms. Only time will tell whether these firms are simply caught up in their own feud or have any interests in funding media firms.
The Great Email Robbery
Microsoft was recently in the limelight because of “The Great Email Robbery”. Microsoft has been battling the breach of private data of thousands of its users due to existing vulnerabilities in its system. The concerns regarding the system vulnerabilities for Microsoft were accentuated after an “unusually aggressive Chinese cyber-espionage unit” gained access to user data on the Microsoft Exchange. This data allegedly belongs to tens of thousands of customers sprawled across 30,000 U.S. organizations.
Microsoft Exchange is the server storing email exchanges between users. It is a repository of every email ever sent by each user on the platform. However, certain Chinese actors sought a way to gain access to this highly sensitive information by means of 4 pre-existing vulnerabilities in the Microsoft server.
These vulnerabilities could be exploited in multiple ways. Simply put, the first vulnerability allows an unauthorized user access to the server, the second one allows them to execute arbitrary commands, while the remaining two allow attackers to write new files.
When exploited, these vulnerabilities could allow potential Chinese hackers to read and gain access to various emails shared across organizations and their users. In response, Microsoft made an early release of software patches to fix the issue.
