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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google has asked a judge in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against the search and advertising giant to force Microsoft to turn over documents, saying it failed not complied with a subpoena, according to an unsealed court record Thursday night.
Google served a subpoena on Microsoft [MSFT.O] more than three months ago, searching for documents regarding Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as its Internet Explorer and Edge, but did not receive them, according to the filing.
Google claims that some of the documents could shed light on whether Microsoft was actually prevented from competing with Google, or whether it simply failed to compete successfully.
“In particular, there are nineteen Microsoft employees who held important positions related to the activities at the heart of this matter but whose files Microsoft refuses to commit to searching at this time,” Google said in the filing. .
Google’s search engine is the market leader by far, while Bing’s share is in single digits. Google also has a browser, Chrome.
Microsoft, also in a filing late Thursday, said the additional requests from Google brought the total number of custodians, files of which Microsoft will have to search to 55.
Google has not provided “specific reasons” why these additional files are needed, Microsoft added.
Google had said the 19 of these additional custodians were “very likely to have relevant, non-cumulative records.”
According to Google, these executives addressed issues at the heart of the matter, including the development and distribution of Microsoft’s various search engines, Microsoft’s search advertising activities, and Microsoft’s efforts to market devices that would give it more access points to search beyond the Windows desktop.
The Justice Department sued Google in October, launching a series of federal and state antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook Inc. The federal case against Google and a larger state case have been consolidated for trial preparation purposes.
(Report by Diane Bartz and Shubham Kalia)
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