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."

Comments

Thomas O. Barnett

[Serious Callers Only]

From the article :

The official, Thomas O. Barnett, an assistant attorney general, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes. At the firm, Justice Department officials said, he never worked on Microsoft matters. Still, for more than a year after arriving at the department, he removed himself from the case because of conflict of interest issues. Ethics lawyers ultimately cleared his involvement.

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

[Doc Ruby]

Why does it seem "strange" that Bush would appoint a Microsoft lawyer to the Justice Department that was supposed to stop Microsoft from abusing its monopoly, after the Clinton Justice Department got the court to declare Microsoft an abusive monopoly that had to be stopped? "Unjust", maybe, but how strange is it for a Justice Department that's got its chief, Attorney General Gonzales, lying to Congress every day to coverup Bush's political purges and cronyism? Not to mention all the Patriot Act travesties Bush's DoJ has committed. Haven't you heard what a zoo they're running over there?

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.

Re:Thomas O. Barnett

[andydread]

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

Re:google is EVIL!

[Phil246]

rtfa.
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

Grep against Google

[Esteanil]

On another note, Google has ordered all Open Source programmers in their employ to issue weekly "patches" that include disabling grep from all linux/BSD distros.
"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.

You can find out how to turn it off

[Dude McDude]

by doing a Google search.

Just goes to show what I always say...

[F34nor]

Its cheeper to buy a congressman than to fix your business model.

Re:google is EVIL!

[Deviate_X]

This is not true. You can disable built in indexing by unchecking indexing of the indexing locations (i.e. Outlook or the Hardrives) or by disabling the indexer in windows services list.

silly fool, nothing to see here

[jollyreaper]

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. Correlation does not equal causation. This is just one in a series of curious coincidences where the interests of the Bush administration and those who have backed them have coincided by mere happenstance. There is simply nothing more to it than that. Now if you will excuse me, there's a party operative at the door with a bundle of cash for me; coincidentally, mind you.