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Justice Dept. Defends Microsoft Against Google
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."
So Google is demanding that Microsoft remove Vista's desktop search feature a feature that other OSes already ship? If other OSes can ship it then so can Microsoft.
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.
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.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So what does google have to do with MS's search engine always running?
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.
Without having read the article (sorry, i haven't had coffee yet), i have to say, I'm with Microsoft on this one. I can definetly see the anti-competitiveness of grafting a web browser or media player into the operating system, BUT for google to complain that the operating system includes a means of searching for files on the computer it's running on... that seems a bit babyish. Am I missing something? Should i read the original article?
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
And maybe someone can lookup these clowns and see what their prior industry affiliation is http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/cabinet.html"So Google is demanding that Microsoft remove Vista's desktop search feature, a feature that other OSes already ship? If other OSes can ship it then so can Microsoft. Hell, if I'd been in charge of Microsoft, I would've been bundling Windows Desktop Search with XP for years now."
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.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
What makes this wrong?
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.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
See, crazy me, I'd want a anti-trust prosecutor running anti-trust prosecutions.
But that's just me.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
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.
Instant Search merely interacts with the indexing service. If you turn Windows Search off (which is trivial) then indexing stops and the Instant Search reverts to doing a file-by-file search a la Win98/95, which is exactly what Google's Desktop Search doesn't do.
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.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien