Maybe it's just me, but Microsoft's post about Google's antitrust problems in Europe reads at times like an old, recovering alcoholic counseling a younger man still in denial.

"Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft," writes Dave Heiner, Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel. "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."

The post continues, "It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors ... Believe me, I know: I’ve been chief competition counsel at Microsoft since 1994, so I’ve seen plenty of competitor complaints."

In other words, Heiner is telling Google: Yes, you don't think you've done anything wrong. Neither did we. What matters is that other people think you might have. And you're too big to expect to be ignored.

Of course, there's no shortage of irony in Heiner's post (which was published Friday afternoon, two days after Google responded to antitrust complaints by noting that two of the three have ties to Microsoft).

Take, for example, this sentence, which will sound incredibly familiar to anyone who followed Microsoft's landmark U.S. antitrust case. "Firms – especially smaller companies – are often reluctant to voice their antitrust concerns publicly because they feel that they must continue to do business with Google and do not want to jeopardize their relationship with them," wrote Microsoft's Heiner in the post.

Apart from that, it's worth noting Microsoft's newfound willingness to fight back aggressively when it thinks it has been wrongly criticized. Observes Heiner, for example, "Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft."

The Microsoft of 10 years ago, trying to shed its public image as a bully, would have made that type of remark in private -- not on its website, in full public view. But these days the company is increasingly the smaller competitor, not the dominant player, which means it can get away with a little snark. In that way, it's interesting to see Microsoft fully embracing its underdog role in Internet search.

After all, the first of the twelve steps is admitting that you're powerless.