Google ridiculed as “peculiar and problematic” demands by EU antitrust regulators to change the way that it displays search results.

Under threat of new multi-million pound fines, Microsoft today said it had signed up its first licensee for a programme EU regulators told it to set up three years ago to share code that helps servers work with the Windows operating platform.

Microsoft was today set to argue that the very way it, and other companies, do business is at stake when it goes before the EU’s second highest court in a bid to overturn a recording antitrust ruling levied against it two years ago.