Microsoft Requests Google To Debar Microsoft.com

Copyright holders often ask Google to remove links from the search engine that contains copyrighted content. Microsoft also routinely asks Google to do so. Last week, Microsoft erroneously asked the search engine giant to remove its own web pages from the search results. The software corporation filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in opposition to its own website for copyright violation.

The request was submitted by a company named LeakID that works on behalf of Microsoft. It asked Google to remove the support pages, Microsoft store, search results and product description. Though, Google and Microsoft are rivals, Google was prompt to identify the mistake and did not remove the pages.

However, this is not the first instance where Microsoft has made a mistake. In the past, it has initiated many take down request for legitimate and original websites accusing them for copyright infringement. According to the reports, Microsoft has made almost 5 million takedown requests in the past 12 months.

The requests are generally automated. They are not confirmed for accuracy and mistakes are bound to occur. These submissions go through, as a result, less renowned websites are victimized those rely on Google for page views.

Last year, the automated request submission targeted Wikipedia, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, CNN and several other federal government websites. Microsoft accused them for unauthorized distribution of Windows 8 Beta.

Before this incident, Microsoft requested Google to remove Bing and Spotify from its search results. Since these websites were prominent, they remained unaffected. But, Real Clear Politics and AMC Theaters vanished from Google in the mid-2012.

Most often, the websites those are not whitelisted are victimized due to the takedown notices. Last month, Google received a whopping 13,829,858 DMCA requests from more than 1,925 reporting organizations. Microsoft features among the top five companies making the request. It made requests for taking down 769,470 URLs in the past one month.

This year, from January to July Google has already deleted almost 100 million links from the search results. This number has doubled in comparison to last year. Only 3% of the requests are held back or discarded.

These are some of the astonishing numbers and the ways in which tech giants fall the victim of their own prowess. Google has noticed the mistake from Microsoft and did not remove the pages from the search engine. But, this is not the case with other less renowned and prominent websites. They quickly disappear vanish from the search in the midst of the DMCA requests.