Microsoft filed a formal complaint with the European Commission Thursday charging Google with unfair practices in search, online advertising and smartphone software, a broader raft of charges against the search giant than the EC is believed to be currently investigating.

It is the first time Microsoft has ever complained to the EC about anybody.

Historically the complaints have been made against Microsoft and its chief lawyer Brad Smith took note of that fact saying, "Having spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot with the European Commission, the filing of a formal antitrust complaint is not something we take lightly."

However, one of the complaints that got the EC to open a formal antitrust investigation of Google last year was made by a small Microsoft online shopping site property in Germany that charged Google with skewing its search results.

Google has subsequently claimed that Microsoft was behind the whole ruckus. Of course, Google had complained to the EC about Microsoft's web browser.

Microsoft's own complaint apparently claims Google prevents Bing, Microsoft's search engine, from crawling and indexing YouTube, which Google owns, and says Google - how's this for ironic - is withholding technical information that would let Window Phone 7 software fully display video content from YouTube.

The metadata is supposedly available only to Android and Apple phones under a deal Google CEO Eric Schmidt cut when he was still on Apple's board. Apple of course does not own a search engine.

Microsoft has also complained about Google's advertising contracts prohibiting advertisers and agencies from using third-party software to compare results and move their own data from Google's AdWords to Microsoft's adCenter.

Smith blogged that "This makes it much more costly for Google's advertisers to run portions of their campaigns with any competitor, and thus less likely that they will do so. That is a significant problem because most advertisers figure that they have to advertise first with Google. If it's too expensive to port their advertising campaign data to competing advertising platforms, many won't do it. Competing search engines are left with less relevant ads, and less revenue. And while this restraint isn't visible to consumers, its effects are nonetheless felt across the web. Advertising revenue is the economic propellant fueling the billions of dollars needed for ongoing search investments. By reducing competitors' ability to attract advertising revenue, this restriction strikes at the heart of a competitive market."

Smith said Microsoft has given the EC a "considerable body of expert analysis" on search engine algorithms to support its case that "Google has engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers."

Google controls 95% of the search market in Europe and 65%-75% of it in the US.

EC spokeswoman Amelia Torres described the EC's investigation of Google, which began in November, as still being at the "preliminary stage." It could be years at this.

See http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/30/adding-our-voice-to-concerns-about-search-in-europe.aspx.