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Ironically, as Microsoft turns the tables of history and makes an antitrust complaint against Google, the search giant is introducing some Microsoft-style approaches to Android. The company is reportedly stepping up its efforts to gain stronger control over the supposedly open source platform, a strategy that could play to Microsoft's advantage by narrowing the gap between Android and WP7.

Microsoft is filing its complaint with the European Commission, scene of some of its own greatest antitrust setbacks. This is part of the ongoing EC probe into Google's practices, and Microsoft SVP and general counsel Brad Smith says the Windows giant has turned to Europe because Google's behaviour is more extreme there (it has 95% of the search market in the EU, whereas in the US, Microsoft Bing has succeeded in gaining 25% share).

In a blog posting, Smith says Google is demonstrating a "broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers". He gives six examples, such as alleged efforts to block rival search engines from accessing YouTube, and to discriminate against rival advertising platforms. There is one specifically mobile claim, that Google has blocked Windows Mobile from being able to play YouTube videos.

Meanwhile, in another part of the mobile world, Google continues to weigh the balance between openness and control in Android. Recently it said it would delay open source access to the Honeycomb tablet version indefinitely, saying that if partners were able to use the release for non-tablet devices like phones, they would come up with sub-standard experiences. Now Google may be going further to limit vendors' freedom of action, in order to achieve a more harmonized, consistent (and possibly Google-centric) Android experience.

According to reports in Digitimes, Google is working with ARM, whose processor design underpins most Android gadgets, on a standardized reference platform. This could be part of a broader push to take a more prescriptive approach in order to improve quality control and fight fragmentation - an approach closer to that of Apple, or of Microsoft, whose limitations on its WP7 licensees are far more rigid than in Windows Mobile.

Reports in BusinessWeek say that Google will, in future, insist on 'non-fragmentation clauses' in contracts with developers. In order to gain early access to new Android releases, companies will have to get their product plans approved by Google. Of course, while that could help cut down on poor quality or rogue implementations, it could also stifle innovation - Google has, in the past, conceded that it focuses its own efforts mainly on phones, but that the open platform has allowed third parties to adapt Android for a far wider class of devices including netbooks, set-top boxes and media players.

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