It’s good to stay on top of industry/interwebz happenings and this story kind of shocked me: Reuters is reporting that Google has joined a European Union Antitrust Case Against Microsoft.

From the article:

“Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users,” Sundar Pichai, Google vice president product manager, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Google introduced the Chrome browser last year, which has taken little market share.

Here is the thing… while Microsoft dominates the browser market share Google dominates the Search Engine Market share and guess where they’ve been advertising Google Chrome? I’ve seen it all over YouTube, below the Google.com search bar and other places as well.

Google might think Microsoft has an unfair advantage in browsers but has Google used all its assets? Have you seen Google totally whore out their homepage to promote and push Chrome as hard as possible? I haven’t. And  you never will because it doesn’t align with Google’s image of simplicity. But beggars can’t be choosers.

The fact that Google has even ENTERED the browser market kind of immediately diffuses the whole “Antitrust” issue on the part of Microsoft. Especially considering Android Netbooks will begin launching later this year and guess what they’ll likely come prepackaged with? Chrome Mobile.

I think joining this Antitrust Case hurts Google more than it helps Google. While there may be immediate benefits of ganging up on Microsoft, the longer term issue is that down the road, other companies may be joining an Antitrust Case against Google and they’ll have this case to point back to showing Google’s perspective that, “It’s only wrong if someone else does it.”

Google has always seemed to operate under the belief that if you build great products and services, they will rise to the top of the market. That’s the way they motivate webmasters, too: they have arranged the algo so it rewards good content and resources.

In my opinion, Google should continue working on its own products and services and stick it to Microsoft fair and square, simply by winning the competition game. Sure, it’ll be hard especially considering the assets that Microsoft has, Antitrust or not. But when Google is in this same position a few years down the road, they’ll be arguing it isn’t fair that they’re being punished for using the company’s success/assets as a competitive advantage.

What do you think?