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Justice Dept. Defends Microsoft Against Google
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jun 10, 2007 07:06 AM
from the friends-in-high-places dept.
from the friends-in-high-places dept.
Frosty Piss writes "The Seattle PI reports that Google has complained to US antitrust officials about the hard-drive searching tool built into Windows Vista, saying that it stymies Google's similar search program. The complaint, lodged late last year, was revealed Saturday by The New York Times in a story about the Bush administration's handling of Microsoft antitrust issues. The real story, though, is not the Google complaint itself, but how the Justice Department is failing to enforce the Microsoft anti-trust decree. According to the story, Thomas Barnett, the assistant U.S. attorney general in charge of antitrust issues, sent a memo last month to state attorneys general across the nation, seeking to persuade them to reject Google's complaint."
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Null Nihils writes "Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has announced that a group of state attorneys general will decide later this week whether to pursue legal action against Microsoft over allegations of anticompetitive conduct that were brought on by Google. From the article: 'Google has complained that Microsoft's new operating system puts it, and other rivals, at a disadvantage. Google said that Vista makes it harder for consumers to use non-Microsoft versions of a desktop search function, which enables users to search the contents of their hard drives. A group of state attorneys general including Connecticut and California is now determining how to react to the claims made by Google.'"
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Your Rights Online: Google Calls For More Limits On Microsoft 270 comments
teh_commodore writes "Scientific American is reporting that Google is now asking a Federal judge to extend the government's anti-trust oversight of Microsoft, specifically with regard to desktop search software. Microsoft had already agreed to modify Vista to allow rival desktop search engines, but Google says that this remedy will come too late — specifically, after (most of) the anti-trust agreement expires in November. What makes this political maneuver interesting is that Google went over the heads of the Department of Justice and US state regulators, who had found Microsoft's compromise acceptable, to appeal directly to the Federal judge overseeing the anti-trust settlement." Update: 06/26 17:20 GMT by KD : The judge is unwilling to play along with Google; she said she will likely defer to an agreement on desktop search forged between Microsoft and the plaintiffs in the case: i.e. Justice and the states.
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Thomas O. Barnett (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems strange that they'd hire someone from a law firm associated with Microsoft for the Justice Dept. and then put him in a position to comment on an MS case.
Re:Thomas O. Barnett (Score:5, Informative)
What you might not have heard is that Jack Abramoff, the crooked lobbyist who helped build Bush's crooked Republican Congress, got his start lobbying out of Bill Gates' father's law firm, Preston Gates. It would seem strange if Microsoft weren't getting the benefit of the crooked system it's helped train and build.
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silly fool, nothing to see here (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Thomas O. Barnett (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell is this strange. This is the Bush administration.
They put oil executives in charge of the EPA
they put antitrust defence lawyers in the Justice Dept.
They put drug company executives in charge of the FDA
I mean really now. Take a look here. http://www.iraqtimeline.com/bushcab.html [iraqtimeline.com]
And maybe someone can lookup these clowns and see what their prior industry affiliation is http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/cabinet.html [whitehouse.gov]Parent
Re:Thomas O. Barnett (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a conflict of interest.
Look at it this way, why don't we take your idea here and run with it. Let's put the rapists in charge of crisis centers and murderers in charge of prisons, after all, they have "background" in the field.
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Re:Thomas O. Barnett (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's just me.
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Grep against Google (Score:5, Funny)
"Grep is an evil command, and as a company that will do no evil, we must have evil commands removed." said a Google spokesman, before returning to his weekend pasttime of clubbing baby seals.
Re:Grep against Google (Score:5, Informative)
2. Its a Windows Service you can easily turn it off.
Why is slashdot full of trolls today?
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Re:Grep against Google (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right to say that the Instant Search box cannot be removed, but Google are saying that the indexing that is being done interferes with their own indexing, which in fact it does not as Windows Search indexing only occurs on idle CPU cycles, so Google's will be given a higher priority. They're also saying you can't deactivate it, which you can - GDS modifies the Services when it sets itself to start on boot, so it's once again trivial to include in that a method of deactivating Windows Search. As I mentioned in another post, they tacitly admit that GDS works fine by providing Sidebar plugins and other miscellaneous extras that are designed specifically for Vista.
Google's arguments here are disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading at worst - I have a feeling they're trying to get Windows Search removed merely to cripple Windows searching and create a niche which doesn't currently exist for them in Vista.
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Just goes to show what I always say... (Score:5, Funny)
hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what Microsoft normally does (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically, Microsoft has moved widely needed functions into their operating system and thereby eliminated the market for alternatives. When they did that for disk compression, Stacker went out of business. When they did it for TCP/IP networking, Trumpet Winsock disappeared. When they did it for email, Eudora stopped being a viable business. When they did it for browsers, Netscape Inc. went from a dot-com success to collapse.
Right now, they're doing it for anti-virus tools, which threatens McAfee, and desktop search, which threatens Google. They'll probably win on both of those, because there's little incentive to install a competitor's tools if those come bundled with the operating system, and because those tools can be tightly integrated with the operating system.
Re:google is EVIL! (Score:5, Informative)
Google is asking that microsoft provide a way for the user to disable it, so that other competing desktop search programs dont battle each other for system resources and ultimately both slow the computer down.
They arent asking for it to be removed outright
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they are demanding that Microsoft lets people disable it. You know, like you can do on any other operating system.
Hell, if I'd been in charge of Microsoft, I would've been bundling Windows Desktop Search with XP for years now.
In fact, I think it's perfectly reasonable to demand that no operating system "bundle" desktop search, web browsers, or other software like that and instead give users the option to pick and choose what components they like.
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't.
I believe operating systems should have had effective file management, including searches, version control, and virtual folders more than a decade ago.
The only reason an ecosystem of third-party utilities has sprung up is because Microsoft has been so sluggish at improving their OS. Let's face it, database-like file management was available in systems like BEOS since 1995. Unfortunately, now a wealth of third-party fixes to Windows limitations has sprung up, and MS can't implement what should be basic functionality without running foul of antitrust issues.
It's their own laxity that's brought them this trap, so I have little sympathy.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or worse yet, Google is demanding that Microsoft bundle Google's crapware? [slashdot.org]
The worst thing about google software is that they distrubute it like malware, in the sense that its hidden in other software like Adobe Reader, Java, and Firefox. If your not careful you can end up with goodle toolbars, sidebars and whatnot installed on your machine.
Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Microsoft has an effective monopoly on operating systems for commodity hardware, they have to play under different, more restrictive, rules. If Apple locks down Safari search it affects about 10 percent of users, 50% of which use Firefox, anyway. When Microsoft introduces new features into Windows, if affects 90+% of the market.
It's also illegal for Microsoft to leverage its monopoly on desktop OSs to gain a monopoly on other existing markets (like web browsers, office suites, corporate e-mail, file and print servers, anti-virus and, yes, desktop search). And, mind you, since being judged guilty of extending their monopoly in the anti-trust lawsuit, they _have_ such restrictions in place and the DoJ _should_ be doing something about it.
While it may look obvious they should be able to extend their products at will, it should be noted that by doing so in an unrestrained way, they can harm the market in very severe ways.
Of course, if all things continue the way they do, Google's time under the microscope is coming, but that doesn't mean Microsoft can do whatever it wants.
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You can find out how to turn it off (Score:5, Funny)
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Even If google is evil! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if google was evil, I'd still want to be able to turn off a search engine created by a proven anti-trust violator.
Wouldn't you?
Just because people claim google is evil is no reason to dismiss an act of a part that has been proven evil.
There must be a lot of MS supporters responding to the article, for who could miss the obviousnesss of this.
The party bringing out the fact that MS's search engine is always on is itself not an evil act. Unless you work for MS.
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Re:Even If google is evil! (Score:5, Informative)
If you like like the command-prompt then type 'net stop "Windows Search"
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Re:google is EVIL! (Score:4, Informative)
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