In a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, CNIL head Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin said she’s reviewed Google’s response to its questions and found them to be sorely lacking — in clarity and specifics.

Answers, too.

“For a large number of questions, the elements provided do not give a precise, clear and comprehensive response to our questions,” Falque-Pierrotin wrote. “While in some cases the questions themselves may have been misunderstood or not clearly expressed, many answers merely provide illustrative examples without describing the exact [processes], procedures or systems Google actually operates.”

In other words, Google’s answers to CNIL’s questions were often incomplete or approximate. And while Falque-Pierrotin generously offers that this might be the result of poor communication, it’s hard to accept that as a legitimate explanation. At this point, the CNIL has clarified its questions to Google twice — once in writing, and a second time during the in-person meeting with Google executives that evidently preceded her letter. During that same meeting, Google was given a third version of the questionnaire, and a June 8 deadline to answer it.

Are we really to believe that Google — a company that prides itself on hiring PhDs, that once sought out cream-of-the-crop engineers with a “mind-bending” Google Labs Aptitude Test, whose mission “is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” — can’t properly answer a few questions about its privacy practices and handling of consumer data?

Because that’s about as likely as Larry Page faking his Master’s degree in computer science.

A more reasonable explanation: Google not only doesn’t want to answer these questions, it doesn’t even believe it is obligated to do so. Indeed, it essentially said as much back in April, when it specifically questioned the authority of the CNIL and the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party to even investigate it. From Google’s April 5, 2012, response to the CNIL:

1) What is the legal basis for the Working Party to act as a regulatory body, or to mandate the CNIL to conduct a regulatory review on behalf of 26 other independent DPAs?
2) What law is being applied to this review?
3) Could the Working Party explain the process being followed and the ultimate aim of the review?

Questions respectfully asked, certainly. But they clearly reflect an uncooperativeness and, more to the point, an overweening arrogance that’s so prevalent these days that it might as well be one of Google’s hallowed “10 Things We Know To Be True.” As Christian Sandvig, a researcher in communications technology and public policy at the University of Illinois, recently told the New York Times in an article on that very subject, “Google doesn’t seem to think it ever will be held accountable. And to date it hasn’t been.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

The European Commission’s approval marks a coup for Sony, which has averted a lengthy in-depth second probe. However, European Union authorities set several conditions, telling Sony it must divest several assets.

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Approval by the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, would represent a victory for Sony, removing the possibility of a longer review of the deal’s antitrust implications. Such a review could add several months to the process.

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I’m here attending the Brussels Forum, which has been described to me — I think accurately — as a D: All Things Digital conference for people who care about transatlantic cooperation. It’s put on by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a policy organization that promotes “better understanding and cooperation between North America and Europe on transatlantic and global issues.” It’s about the same size, has similarly high-impact speakers and panels — it even has red chairs on the stage for those speakers.

I’ve never been to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, but people at Brussels Forum compare it to Davos — but without the annoyance of celebrities trying to be photographed trying to look serious. “We’ve been to Davos, but we prefer this,” observed former Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, who was having breakfast with his wife at the table next to mine in the hotel restaurant.

Bennett was only one of the people I recognized here: There’s a handful of people attending from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives: Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire was on a Friday panel about Europe’s place in the world; Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida has been impressing everyone — including me — with his frank and forceful views on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. I’d quote him, but the session was off the record. More on that later.

Syria was top of mind during Friday’s main event here, an address by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark who is now the Secretary General of NATO. He made news by saying that NATO has no intention of intervening in Syria. (See the first video, below.) Meanwhile, there are a pair of Washington-based Syrian activists here (one of which you’ll see in the second video, below), basically pleading for the international community to do something, anything, to help them out just a little.

Syria is a big topic here. The newspapers are buzzing about the sanctions imposed by the EU on Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. While he’s been on a determined campaign over the last year of systematically killing pretty much anyone in his country who thinks he ought to leave power, she’s been saddled with sanctions that ban her — personally — from entering all EU member states except the U.K. (she was born there, after all). Her taste for luxury shopping and travel amid the outrageous slaughter that is taking place in that country has finally proven too much to bear for the EU.

There has also been a lot of chatter about the leaking of some 3,000 personal email messages to and from the Assad household, showing that while the Syrian president is carrying out his campaign to stay in power, he’s concerned about his inability to buy songs on iTunes, and has sought the help of a friend in Lebanon.

The Brussels Forum is not a technology conference, by any stretch of the term. People here are discussing world-changing ideas such as food security, the Iranian crisis, the Arab Spring and President Obama’s strategic “pivot to Asia.” Yet technology hangs in the backdrop of many of the discussions.

Access to technology and the ability to share information and organize has been a core feature of the many changes that have shaken the Middle East during the past year. When Egypt tried to cut itself off from the Internet, it made headlines around the world.

On that topic, I made the acquaintance last night of two people with interesting views. I made Twitter friends with Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. She serves on the EU Parliament’s committee on Foreign Affairs, and is also a founder of its Intergroup on New Media and Technology. I hope to chat with her about her ideas on making sure that people in Iran — despite the many economic sanctions imposed on that country — still get access to tech tools they need to express themselves and organize politically. She has also been tweeting like crazy about the Brussels Forum proceedings.

My neighbor at dinner last night was Jovan Ratković, the foreign policy adviser to Serbian President Boris Tadić. Ratković was a founder of Otpor!, a Serbian resistance movement that stood against the nationalist government of Slobodan Milosevic. Had Facebook and Twitter existed during the heyday of Otpor!, they would have been excellent tools for that group. As it was, Otpor! — the word means “resistance” in Serbian — used the Internet early and often to organize and get its message out.

Otpor! led directly to the foundation of CANVAS, the Belgrade-based Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, which has had a direct influence on the protests in Egypt that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. CANVAS, I’m told, has been so influential on the various youth uprisings around the world that it is soon to be the subject of a profile on the CBS TV news program “60 Minutes.” In short, having Ratković walk me through all this made for an interesting dinner conversation, with a not-inconsequential tech theme.

So the question you’re probably have is, what the heck am I doing here in the first place? I’ve been asked to moderate a Sunday morning panel entitled “The Future of Privacy in the Digital Economy”; the panel participants are Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy for Product Engineering at Google, Erika Mann, Head of EU Policy for Facebook, and Alexander Alvaro, vice president of the European Parliament.

Like most of the other panels here — except for those held in the main ballroom — the proceedings will be conducted under “Chatham House Rule,” which is a polite way of saying the discussion will be off the record. I hope to talk about with the panelists in an on-the-record setting, as well, though probably not all together.

The subject of consumer data privacy is certainly heating up on both sides of the Atlantic. On Monday, the U.S.S Federal Trade Commission is expected to lay out a new, wide-ranging policy framework on the subject. Expect lots of references to “do-not-track” mechanisms. And earlier this year, the EU unveiled a draft of a new European Data Protection Regulation. In Europe, the view of privacy is very government-centric, and data privacy is considered a key piece of human rights law. In the U.S., there’s a lot more willingness among policymakers to let companies regulate themselves. One question I’m definitely going to ask my panelists: How do the different legal approaches change how they do business in Europe versus the U.S.? I’ll bring you what on-the-record answers I can.

So, anyway, that is what I’m doing here in Brussels.

(Image is of the Grand Place, one of the primary tourist attractions in Belgium that I hope to visit.)

The investigations — which span U.S. federal and state agencies, as well as a pan-European effort led by France — could embroil Google in years of legal battles and result in hefty fines for privacy violations. The Journal in February reported that Google was using special computer code to install tiny tracking files, or “cookies,” on some people’s computers, iPhones and iPads, even if the devices were set to block this kind of tracking.

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Cisco announced the appeal in a post to Cisco’s corporate blog by Cisco’s senior VP for video and collaboration, Marthin De Beer. In it, Cisco argues that the EU should reexamine the deal because Skype doesn’t work with other video and audio calling systems that use industry standard technologies, such as Cisco’s.

“Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others,” De Beer wrote. “Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications,” and so has filed the appeal. Messagenet, a European IP calling service, joined Cisco in filing the appeal. Both had commented to the European Commmission during initial hearings on the deal before it was approved.

Cisco doesn’t want the merger rescinded, but rather wants the EC to impose some interoperability conditions on Microsoft. Part of Microsoft’s plan with Skype has been to combine it with its Lync video and voice calling software for businesses. Both Lync and Skype use their own proprietary calling technologies, and so aren’t compatible with other video and calling services.

Sources familiar with the matter say Cisco had sought to work with Microsoft to ensure that its videoconferencing gear would work with Skype, but was unsuccessful in reaching a deal.

Skype has about 700 million users worldwide, and before Microsoft acquired it, had sought to go public in April. For calendar year 2010, it reported revenue of $860 million and a net loss of about $7 million. Successful mainly with consumers who like its free service, the company had begun to work on a strategy meant to bring the service to enterprise users, but had suffered some service failures that gave its target corporate customers pause. The Microsoft acquisition, announced in May, happened at just the right moment.

When the deal was announced, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Skype would, in time, be integrated with other Microsoft products, including the Xbox gaming console, Windows Phone for smartphones, and even its Hotmail Web email service.

Cisco’s videoconferencing business is a force primarily among large companies. It has 50,000 companies who use its gear, but it struggled to create a consumer-focused service, and shuttered its Umi product last year amid a wider corporate restructuring.

Microsoft wasn’t immediately available for comment on Cisco’s move, but I’ll add anything I get from it as soon as I have it.

Update: And here’s the official response from Redmond: “The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions. We’re confident the Commission’s decision will stand up on appeal.”

Here’s the full text of Cisco’s post announcing the appeal:

Video to Video Communications is the Future

In the past decade video communications has moved out of the realm of science fiction to become commonplace in our homes, at work, and on mobile devices. Yet we remain some distance from the goal of video calls being as easy and ubiquitous as phone calls are today – across any network and between all devices.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others. Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications, and therefore today appealed the European Commission’s approval of the Microsoft/Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined us in the appeal.

We did not take this action lightly. We respect the European Commission, and value Microsoft as a customer, supplier, partner, and competitor. Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications.

This appeal is about one thing only: securing standards-based interoperability in the video calling space. Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number. Today, however, you can’t make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike.

Cisco believes that the right approach for the industry is to rally around open standards. We believe standards-based interoperability will accelerate innovation, create economic value, and increase choice for users of video communications, entertainment, and services.

The video communications industry is at a critical tipping point with far reaching consequences. Just three years from now the world will be home to nearly 3 billion Internet users, the average fixed broadband speed will be 28 Mbps, and 1 million video minutes (the equivalent of 674 days) will traverse the internet every second. As video collaboration becomes increasingly mainstream, multiple vendors will have to work together to enable global scale and broad customer choice.

For the sake of customers, the industry recognizes the need for ubiquitous unified communications interoperability, particularly between Microsoft/Skype and Cisco products, as well as products from other unified communications innovators. Microsoft’s plans to integrate Skype exclusively with its Lync Enterprise Communications Platform could lock-in businesses who want to reach Skype’s 700 million account holders to a Microsoft-only platform.

At the heart of this opportunity is a question about the model for interoperability. One approach allows each vendor to decide how they will interoperate. Another approach aligns the industry around open standards defined by non-partisan governing bodies. The answer will be critical to whether and how quickly video calls become “the next voice.”

When vendors implement their own protocols and selectively interoperate, they push the burden of interoperability to the customer. We respectfully request that the General Court act on our concerns and for the European Commission to ensure the proper protections are put in place to encourage innovation and a competitive marketplace.

“This merger decision should not and will not mean that we are not concerned by the possibility that, once Google is the owner of this portfolio, Google can abuse these patents, linking some patents with its Android devices,” Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters, according to Reuters. “This is our worry.”

European regulators had asked for more information about the deal, but said last month that they would make their call on it by today.

The commission said in a statement that it had concluded that Google was unlikely to prevent other hardware makers from getting access to Android, given Motorola’s relatively small share of the market.

The deal needs approval from the Department of Justice, though that is expected to come as early as this week. It also needs sign-off in other countries, including China, according to Reuters.

Google said it still expects to close the deal early this year.

“This is an important milestone in the approval process and it moves us closer to closing the deal,” Google said in a blog post. “We are now just waiting for decisions from a few other jurisdictions before we can close this transaction.”

In a speech given at the Concurrences conference in Paris today, Almunia promised to take a hard line with the abuse of technology standards-related patents.

“When monopolies and tight oligopolies are allowed to occupy a market, they tend to resist change and often end up caring only about the preservation of their business models,” Almunia said. “Owners of such standards essential patents are conferred a power on the market that they cannot be allowed to misuse.”

And should they try, there will be hell to pay, because Almunia is fully prepared to use the EU’s antitrust powers to thwart them.

“I am determined to use antitrust enforcement to prevent the misuse of patent rights to the detriment of a vigorous and accessible market,” he said. “I have initiated investigations on this issue in several sectors and we will see the results in due time.”

Among those inquiries? A formal investigation into Samsung to determine whether it’s using standards-essential patents to manipulate the mobile market in Europe.

The company characterized the request as routine and shrugged off the notion the deal could be blocked.

“We’re confident the Commission will conclude that this acquisition is good for competition and we’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review,” Google said in a statement to AllThingsD.

Motorola shareholders have already approved selling to Google, though the transaction awaits antitrust approvals in the United States, EU and elsewhere.

“We requested information from both Apple and Samsung,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said today. “We have not yet received the answers. We need to look at this because IP rights can be used as a distortion of competition but we will need to look at the answers. In particular, in the IT sector, it is obvious it is not the only case. Apple and Samsung is only one case where IP rights can be used as an instrument to restrict competition.”

But with more than 20 cases in 10 countries, this fight is among the biggest out there right now, and it involves some standards-essential patents, so really it was only a matter of time before the European Commission took a look. If the EC ends up pursuing a case against either company, it could fine them up to 10 percent of their annual revenue.

Microsoft has established a new beachhead in its semantic set-to with Apple and rallied some new allies to its fight against genericide. On Thursday it challenged Apple’s rights to the trademarks “App Store” and “Appstore” in the European market, filing a formal application for declaration of invalidity in the EU’s Community Trade Mark office. That joins similar paperwork from HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, all of whom argue that “app store” is too generic a term for anyone to trademark.

“Microsoft and other leading technology companies are seeking to invalidate Apple’s trademark registration for APP STORE and APPSTORE because we believe that they should not have been granted because they both lack distinctiveness,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “The undisputed facts establish that ‘app store’ means exactly what it says, a store offering apps, and is generic for the services that the registrations cover.”

This is, of course, the same argument Microsoft (and Amazon, for that matter) have been making in the States. That said, as I’ve noted here before, Apple was first to request a trademark on App Store and, as this Google Trend line shows, the phrase didn’t enter the vernacular until 2008, right around the time Apple began popularizing it.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Amazon to Apple: “App Store” is Generic; Just Ask Your CEO
• How About We Call It APP Store, as in “Amazon Portable Program Store”
• Like “Office” and “Word” Aren’t Generic…

That means smartphone giants like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. will likely have to obtain user consent before gathering the data, delete the information after a certain period of time and keep it anonymous.

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The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission’s interest in Apple’s new subscription service is at a preliminary stage, and might not develop into either a formal investigation or any action against the company. But it comes as Apple has attracted growing antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, said Thursday that the commission was aware of the new subscription service and was “carefully monitoring the situation.”

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Or wanted it–at least not the kind that Schmidt’s been offering recently, which was on display once again today in yet another PR gaffe.

Asked by the Sunday Telegraph about the European Commission inquiry into the company’s dominance in search, Schmidt spun the requests for information that Google received as part of that investigation as the beginnings of possible settlement discussions.

“I think it is in our interests and I would hope in their interests to do a quick analysis of concerns that have been raised by competitors, hopefully they are minor or they are not correct, and we’ll find out and make sure we are operating well within the law and the spirit of the law,” he said. “We understand we play a major role in Europe and we’re not denying that. We have a lot of meetings with appropriate government officials.”

We have a lot of meetings with appropriate government officials.

If that’s true, the officials to which Schmidt refers have nothing to do with the European inquiry into Google’s business practices. Because the European Commission today flat-out denied it is in antitrust resolution talks with the company. “There are no discussions,” commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres said in a statement. “The investigation is not finished.”

We have a lot of meetings with appropriate government officials. One more to add to Schmidt’s dubious canon.

The deal, which once approved would amount to the largest deal in Intel’s history, still faces scrutiny by the European Union’s antitrust regulators, who have expressed concerns. This is of course the group that handed down the largest antitrust fine in its history against Intel. An appeal by Intel against that fine is pending.

I still find this combination a little confusing. I certainly see the need for Intel to grow its business beyond its core of providing the world’s personal computers and servers with microprocessors, and to add security features to future chips. But making chips is what it does best, and history has shown that when Intel deviates from what it does best it often regrets it later.

When a member sees someone attempting to shoplift, he or she presses a button, alerting the store owner, who assesses the situation and awards the user points, depending on whether it was a false alarm, suspicious activity or a crime in progress.

Internet Eyes sweetens the deal by offering a prize of £1,000 to the month’s top point-scorer.
Having viewers pay a membership fee weeds out pranksters and troublemakers from the site, says Tony Morgan, founder and managing director of Internet Eyes.” We get people that really want to fight crime in this country, not just voyeurs that just want to press the button,” Mr. Morgan says.

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The agency also closed a second investigation into Apple’s repair policies, which required iPhone warranty service to be performed in the country in which the device was purchased. Now that the company is offering cross-border iPhone warranty service, there’s no need to pursue that investigation any further, either.

Under those rules, search engines must anonymize user data after six months. And while most search engines have reduced their data retention periods, none have truly complied with EU regulations. Google (GOOG) keeps user data for nine months. Microsoft (MSFT) keeps it for six, but holds on to software cookies and whatnot for a year beyond that. And Yahoo (YHOO) eliminates user data after 90 days, but only partially.

“On behalf of the data protection authorities in the EU united in WP29, I call on you to improve the protection of the online privacy of users of your search engine services,” the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party said in its letters.

“Besides limiting the retention period of personal data,” the letters continue, “measures include a reduction of the possibility to identify users in the search logs and the creation of an external audit process to reassure users that you are delivering on your privacy promises, i.e. by involving an independent and external auditing entity.”

Regulators had a particularly stern rebuke for Google, whose privacy practices have come under intense scrutiny this month after the company admitted its Street View cars had been–heh heh–“inadvertently” collecting and storing payload data from unsecured private Wi-Fi networks for three years.

“Considering Google’s dominant position in almost every EU member state, with a market share of up to 95 percent in some national search engine markets, the company has a significant role in European citizens’ daily lives,” the regulators wrote. “The company’s apparent lack of focus in data retention is concerning.”

Consider this graphic from the New York Times, which shows the proliferation of options available in those tools (click chart to link to larger version on original site).

Addles the brain, doesn’t it?

As the Times notes, to opt out of full disclosure of most of their personal information, Facebook users must click through more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require making decisions about more than 170 options.

Facebook describes its privacy tools as “comprehensive and precise,” but that’s poor justification for something so ridiculously convoluted from a company that positions itself as a caretaker of identity.

Little wonder that Facebook is facing a barrage of criticism. As European Union’s Article 29 Working Party said in a scathing letter today, Facebook’s privacy practices are “unacceptable.”

The proposal is similar to rules recently enacted in the European Union on wireless companies, which require carriers to send a text message to subscribers who are racking up roaming charges or getting close to their plan’s roaming limit.

The Federal Communications Commission proposal also considers whether carriers should send real-time alerts to subscribers who are exceeding their monthly voice, data or text messaging limits.

“We’ve gotten hundreds of complaints about bill shock,” said Joel Gurin, head of the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, in a statement. He said the agency is looking at if “there’s any reason that American carriers can’t use similar automatic alerts to inform consumers when they are at risk of running up a high bill.”

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Earlier this week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was all over the place talking up the company on the occasion of its 15th birthday.

Here’s a video of a longish interview she did with CBNC, embedded below, where she cracks wise a lot, but says little.

My favorite part: When the interviewer oddly asks if Yahoo (YHOO) is a trinket and Bartz pipes up that it is a bracelet!

Thankfully, we have the critical jewelry issue around Yahoo settled.

Bartz also gets a good one off about Facebook’s lack of revenue compared with Yahoo, after being asked why Yahoo was not as hot as the social networking phenom.

“Remind me, what’s their revenue?” she asked.

Bartz’s week also included a lunch with a group of reporters at its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ–pretty much Lady BoomTown and a dozen dudes–Tuesday, at which she talked about a range of things, offered Sprinkles cupcakes and broke no substantive news.

She did give good quote though.

Bartz, for example, said she didn’t “wish antitrust on anybody,” when asked about Google (GOOG) and its issues with regulators in Europe.

She also noted, talking about the search giant’s recent conviction in Italy and its potential impact: “The [European Union] concerns me.”

But when talking about Google’s threat to leave China over censorship issues, Bartz was less kind. “It looked to me like it was more of a statement than an action,” she said. “If they wanted to pull out, they should have pulled out.”

Perhaps the most controversial remark was when she seemed to compare herself with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, pointing out that his innovative turnaround of the iconic Silicon Valley computer company took a lot of time after he returned in 1996.

“He knew the DNA better than anyone and it took him four years,” she declared, noting her tenure was just over a year.

Perhaps her most important quote was related to losing search market share and seeing Facebook’s user growth close in on Yahoo.

Bartz said the real point at Yahoo was more “the fight to get ad dollars around relevant users.”

As in, from a jewelry point of view: Finding a diamond in the rough.

Here’s the video of the CNBC interview with Bartz:

Oh, there’s no question in the often paranoid mind of BoomTown that Google is one scary company, mostly due to its huge market share in search across the globe.

Check out this eye-popping chart below from a story in The Wall Street Journal today on this very subject, for example, if you care to share my wariness.

Thus, there is no doubt that the preliminary scrutiny over antitrust complaints the company is getting from the European Commission, which Google (GOOG) has forcefully denied, is not untoward, even if those complaints have been leveled by companies affiliated with archrival Microsoft (MSFT).

There will be more to come, of course, as Google’s growing power is targeted by those interested in stopping its growth–both those with pure motives and not-so-pure.

But no matter how you slice the monopolistic pie, Google most certainly did not deserve, nor should anyone tolerate, the conviction in Italy of three of its execs on privacy violations.

A judge in Milan said the trio had not complied with Italian law because they allowed a disparaging video of a boy with Down Syndrome being harassed by other teens to be posted on the company’s former Google Video site, even though it was quickly yanked,

An appeal is already in the works, which is a good thing since it’s hard to imagine how such a ruling will stand and how any company can police itself so stringently given the mass of user-generated content.

While every online company must have strict rules to prevent such abuses, this case is a little like blaming the telephone company if one gets an abusive call.

And while Google most certainly deserves some of the legal attention it is getting, this ruling should make every U.S. Internet firm–including Microsoft–scared not of Google’s frighteningly powerful search algorithm, but of Italy’s horrifyingly idiotic legal system.

Italian-Americans–of which I am one–or anyone else can gripe all they want about “The Situation.”

But–make no mistake–this is the real situation.

“This week came news that the European Commission is investigating various aspects of Google’s conduct, including claims of retaliation, exclusivity and manipulation of search results to disadvantage rivals,” Heiner wrote. “Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere–at Microsoft. Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors….[But] ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”

A great point, and one that makes Google’s inflammatory out-of-the-gate finger-pointing earlier this week seem a bit hysterical. And if Microsoft’s European properties did spur the EC’s preliminary investigation into Google, so what? As Heiner wryly notes, “Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors”–“dumbass” here is, presumably, implied.

So does Microsoft (MSFT) feel Google (GOOG) is worthy of antitrust scrutiny? Well, what do you think?

“Both search and online advertising are increasingly controlled by a single firm, Google,” Heiner wrote. “…Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success. Nor should firms be punished just because a particular business practice may harm a rival–competition on the merits can do that, too. That is a position that Microsoft has long espoused, and we’re sticking to it. Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content (like Google Books) and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly. Ultimately the competition law agencies will have to decide whether or not Google’s practices should be seen as illegal.”

Well, there you go. Obviously, the gloves are coming off here. Too bad for Google that it doesn’t take a punch very well.