Google hits back at News Corp – with a GIF of a laughing baby

Google has hit out at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in a strident attack accusing the Wall Street Journal of “inaccuracies” – and featuring an animated GIF of a laughing baby.

News Corp has been a vocal critic of the tech giant’s dominant position in search, with chief executive Robert Thomson accusing it last year of being a “platform for piracy”.

Google’s latest blogpost, titled “Really, Rupert?” , said that Thomson had accused it of creating a “less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society”. “Given the tone of some of your publications, that made quite a few people chuckle,” wrote Rachel Whetstone, Google’s senior vice-president of communications and policy, following the comment with an animated GIF of a baby laughing.

It continued: “This week you were at it again. One of your newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, accused Google of wielding undue political influence.” “Blimey!” it added, linking to Murdoch tabloid the Sun’s famous post-1992 election front page claiming “It’s the Sun wot won it!”

Google then went on to respond in detail to various claims made in Wall Street Journal articles, particularly “Inside the US antitrust probe of Google”.

The WSJ suggested that US regulator the FTC had decided not to take legal action against Google for allegedly abusing its dominant position despite recommendations from its own staff to do so. Google quotes an FTC statement this week stating its decision “was in accord with the recommendations of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Economics, and Office of General Counsel”.

Google also responds to claims that its executives met officials from Barack Obama’s administration more than those of other tech companies. The WSJ said Google staff had visited the White House 230 times since Obama’s inauguration compared with 20 for media group Comcast. Google responded that 33 of these were not employees at the time of their visit, while five were from an engineer helping to fix the government’s Healthcare.gov website. In any case, it claimed, many of the visits were not to discuss the antitrust investigation, while others included rivals such as Yahoo and AOL.

Google concluded by stating: “We understand you have a new found love of the regulatory process, especially in Europe, but as the FTC’s Bureau of Competition staff concluded, Google has strong pro-competitive arguments on our side.”

In another flippant gesture, it signed off with another animated GIF, this time of Eddie Murphy playing an old-school Jewish New Yorker in Coming to America.

Google is establishing a reputation for using animated GIFs in its dealings with the media – last week, it answered a reporter’s request for comment with the image of the baby from Good luck Charlie.