Brazil is investigating Google for anticompetitive practices following complaints from Microsoft and Brazilian rivals. Brazilian antitrust watchdog Cade is looking into accusations that Google has nicked rivals' content, discouraged their advertisers and favoured its own product listings in search results.

A Google spokeswoman in Sao Paulo said in an email that the company would cooperate with Brazilian regulators. Microsoft filed a complaint charging Google with obstructing advertising campaigns across multiple search engines to give an unfair advantage to its highly profitable AdWords service. AdWords is Google's main source of advertising dollars, which make up 95 percent of revenue.

Shopping sites Buscapé and Bondfardo also accused Google of reproducing product reviews from their users. Brazilian authorities are free to give Google a good kicking after it was revealed that the United States spied on President Dilma Rousseff and state-run oil company Petrobras.

There are also concerns that Google is not paying enough taxes. Still it was only obeying orders from US spooks, so perhaps it should ask the government for a handout for doing its dirty work.