Slashdot Mirror
Google To Microsoft — Give Users Choices In Vista
An anonymous reader writes "A Google spokesman has asked Microsoft to 'preserve user choice for search and other applications' with its future products, such as Vista. The spokesman made this comment after meeting with European Union antitrust regulators, though he added that at this point, the company has no plans to make antitrust allegations against Redmond. Notably, McAfee and Symantec have accused Microsoft of not being forthcoming with the code they need to ensure their security wares run smoothly on Vista, and the EU has already expressed concern about Microsoft's potentially anticompetitive plans."
their there they're - Learn them. Use them. You sound like an eight year old.
When you first upgrade to IE 7, the first page that appears is a configuration page. The first item is selecting your search engine. You can either take the current one (which defaults to the Microsoft Live Search) or choose a different one. If you select the second option, you are taken to a page with almost every search engine on it to choose from, or you can put your own selection in if it is not listed. So, you can. Google's complaint is without merit.
I don't really know what Google is ranting about. Google is 2 clicks away as the default search engine in IE7.
I perfectly understand why Microsoft doesn't want to show a stupid "Pick your default search engine" dialog box at startup - that would be stupid.
Really, this is one issue I don't agree with Google on.
Now, if there comes to light something in Vista that, for example, prevents Google Desktop from being installed, then I would be very upset.
Actually, even IF your market share is 95%. Heck, even if it's somehow 100% you still aren't required by Anti-Trust laws to hand over your core company secrets.
Secrets, no. Means of interoperation, in many cases, yes. ATT was forced to let other companies use their actual networks, so there's some serious precedent. In this case, we have MS using hidden APIs to let their AV products be better - or actually functional - compared to their competitors. That's pretty much textbook anticompetitive behavior.
To extend the analogy, if Coca-Cola somehow managed to totally out-market every other cola maker in the entire world and completely "OWNED" the Cola market, they still wouldn't be required to hand out the secret formula.
But that's not what we're talking about here. Imagine Coke had 100% market share, and now they enter the cup business. And let's say that put a chemical in coke that rots through competitors' cups, so that you can only use Coke's cups. Would that pass Sherman scrutiny? Not likely.
Just because MS is choosing to (Finally) secure thier OS doesn't mean that Symantec et al can't still offer thier products., They will simply have to rewrite them to work within the new Vista framework.
I think you need to look more carefully at what's going on here. It's not that MS is offering an AV product (fine), it's that it will use kernel hooks that are simply not available to other competitors. I think Symantec et al are clever enough to rewrite for Vista, assuming they're not literally locked out. That's what MS is apparantly doing, and that's a problem.