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Microsoft May Be Investigated By Attorneys General
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.'"
Not only is this a dupe, but Google's argument was already shown in the comments to that article to be a complete sham.
Have Google actually deigned to comment on the issue yet? Last time I checked they were shunning any reasonable debate on the matter.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
You don't have to. But if you wanted the choice it would be unfeasible for you. You are missing the overreaching concern. It isn't about what you in particular want but about choices for everyone in the context of a monopoly.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
My understanding is that Google want MS to provide a way for the average user to turn off the MS indexing, to avoid unnecessarily consuming resources by running search engines from both Google and MS side by side. By 'average user' they mean someone who isn't familiar with tinkering around in the services widget.
The article was not specific enough. There is an AP article that has more details.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
MS doesn't have to open up their code. Just their protocols and APIs. If you don't know how that's different from opening up the code, then you aren't qualified to comment on the subject.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Microsoft desktop search is used by other microsoft products for its searching. For example if you want to do email searching in outlook 2007 you have to go and download microsoft desktop search, this is on windows XP.
So if you want to do searches in your email and also use google desktop search you are in trouble since both search engine now have to be running and scanning everything.
Regardless, Google have misrepresented this entire issue.
1) They complained to the DoJ/AG without informing Microsoft of the issue and attempting to have it solved,
2) Windows Search is designed to only operate during idle cycles specifically so it will not interfere with any other running program including Google Desktop Search,
4) Windows Search can be disabled from the Control Panel, the command line, and if Google could be bothered they can disable it using the Services API during an install of their software, and
5) Google have even coded Vista Sidebar widgets that are designed to interact with GDS on Vista, which makes their complaint make even less sense.
I'm sorry to hijack your comment but if anybody else could manage to be a little more informed on the issue rather than immediately jump to the standard "anti-competitive monopoly blah-blah" response then maybe a more intellectual debate could ensue.
I'm not so sure I entirely agree with you, the Windows Platform consists of a lot of Microsoft products working together but you can definitely say that Word is a seperate application, Mediaplayer is a seperate application etc.
When you buy a PC you have to buy things like Word seperately, they're not included in the price of Windows the operating system. It's the PC retailers who bundle useful software onto their PC's or it's businesses who deploy the necessary applications for their business on their servers.
Were applications and operating system to be divided then both the operating system and the applications would need to use open, published standards to communicate and interoperate with one another. Other software companies could be involved in developing these standards and use them to design their own applications. This would increase competition and encourage better quality software and cheaper prices for the rest of us.
Whoops, just noticed you said Wordpad and not Word. Technically yes it is an application and things like Text Pad compete in the same sort of arena so I suppose it should be seperated too.
It seems to me that Google is trying to beat Microsoft at its own game. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about Google being able to pull it off. Especially since it would require quite a bit of Evil(TM).
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Your step three is missing...
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Why no complaints about Calculator or Notepad? Why no complaints about Hyperterminal?
Because you can easily replace them? Because Microsoft hasn't limited the ability to run other programs, such as Putty?
Why isn't Google complaining about Linux's find?
Because the GNU/Linux developers haven't intentionally hobbled Google's ability to write a search system for GNU/Linux?
Apple is far more anti-competitive than MS? Why doesn't anyone hassle them?
Uhm... how do you mean? Is Apple in a dominant position, and capable of using its dominant position to force others out of business?
This knee-jerk windows hating grows so fucking tiresome and is so transparent it is not even funny.
The thing that grows tiresome for me is watching Microsoft use the same old illegal tricks to put competitors at a disadvantage, rather than competing on merit. (The trick to a "free market" is competing on merit, not market dominance.)
How about taking care of something that matters such as the obvious price fixing in the gasoline market?
Fuck, yeah.
Fucking democratic governments and laws - completely useless and corrupt. But oh, you get the illusion that your vote matters... wake up dipshits, you've been taken for a ride.
Fuckin' A yeah!
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
In a way, Google's complaint mirrors that of Netscape but instead of browsers, it's search applications.
Not exactly.
In the Netscape case, they had an established product, then MS started to compete. In this case, Vista (originally Longhorn) had a powerful search functionality built in since it's inception. (2001) In fact that was one of the first features that was announced about Vista. Even Windows 2000 and above had text search indexing (indexing service) integrated, although it's not as powerful as the indexers today, it still was in the OS.
Google's desktop beta was released in October 2004. Even the complete Vista overhaul (which happened in August 2004) happened before Google's Desktop was released to beta.
The other thing that needs to be asked is, "Does this deep inclusion severely hurt Google's bottom line overall?" and the answer is probably not. Unlike Netscape, where much of it's revenue was generated by Navigator, GDS is a very small revenue generator for google Vs it's other properties, Especially Vs Google Search or Google AdSense. I'd bet the Google Toolbar has more market penetration than Google Desktop, and the Security/privacy issues that were brought up by the press against GDS couldn't have helped it's penetration as well.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Writing 100% bulletproof applications in the real-world (especially given customer and consumer expectations) is next to impossible, not unless you were doing small and simple things and you've enormous amount of time and money at your disposal. No matter how much you test and secure your system or how bulletproof you make it, there is almost always a point where usability versus security becomes an issue, or compatibility versus security becomes an issue.
There was a time when Microsoft's products were riddled with security flaws, but over the years, their platforms and offerings have stabilized considerably. If anything, for the amount of complex stuff that they write, their security flaws are hardly a surprise.
I mean, sure, you can have something like OpenBSD, but just how usable do you think such a system would be? Consider the kernel, the UI, the file system, assorted applications (browser, office applications) etc. and you'd begin to see how hard it becomes to keep the system locked tight with that level of complexity (not to mention scalability).
I know that it's all fun to bash Microsoft on Slashdot and all that, but sometimes I just wish that people would just get a grip on reality, not their ideal, tiny little world.
So if you want to do searches in your email and also use google desktop search you are in trouble since both search engine now have to be running and scanning everything.
And people are STILL believing this bullshit?
Google can install, and set itself as the default search engine that works inside Outlook, the Desktop, OneNote, etc. There are clear APIs that Google can use on both sides to hook into the application. Google can also TURN OFF THE MS SEARCH ENGINE COMPLETELY.
Google is pissing on the intelligence of SlashDot users that don't spend enough time 'developing' Windows solutions that deal with these issues. i.e. They are lying to the AGs and the public, and YET it seems people here are STUPID enough to flat out believe Google, when everything they are stating is either inaccurate or a lie.
The ONLY other explaination is Google's developers are TOO FREAKING stupid to live and shouldn't be developing Desktop Search software, as this is EASY stuff and there is NO REASON to EVER have both Search engines running at the same time, whether the users are using Office 2007, XP, or even Vista.
All MS Search products can BE REPLACED and turned off by Google's product. PERIOD.
Yeah because having google's installer ask for elevated privileges to turn off the service, which is a trivial thing to do, and would definitavely turn off MSs Windows Search indexing is too hard. You know what, if the goof voyuers at google can't figure out such a simple procedure, one which they could no doubt google for, they deserve to have their teeth kicked it. In fact their software would almost have to be so horribly written that it's almost certainly a public service to prevent it's installation. The world isn't made for the incomprehensibly lazy and stupid, and software shouldn't be written by lawyers.
Where does it stop? Is notepad too far? I bring it up because when you look at writting a notepad program it's barely more than a text dialogue. So maybe there should be court mandated optional 3rd party text dialogues? No, of course not.
MICROSOFT HASN'T LIMITED GOOGLE'S ABILITY TO RUN GOOGLE DESKTOP SEARCH.
Microsoft hasn't "intentionally hobbled" GDS!
It's very easy to turn off Vista search indexing. There is an API to use for Google itself!
Google is lying.
You do not need to install Windows Desktop Search to search in Outlook 2007 in XP. In fact, I opted against it and unticked the checkbox for it to stop asking me.
You can still use the traditional Advanced Find by visiting the Tools Menu -> Instant Search -> Advanced Find, or CTRL-SHIFT-F, or probably a whole pile of context menus.
This whole flap isn't about Microsoft merely including products in Vista. It's about them including their products in Vista and also locking Vista down to use only Microsoft's products for certain purposes even when Microsoft themselves provide and use an API specifically designed to allow for seamless substitution of service providers. It's as if Microsoft let you install any word processing software you wanted but no matter what settings you changed or what you told the system, double-clicking on a document would only open the document in Microsoft Word.
Internally, the search engine used by Vista's search boxes is a component with a defined API. The search engine registers as an implementation of that API, Vista itself uses that API to be a client of the search engine. And there's a well-defined way in the COM/DCOM system for a component to register as an implementation of an API and for the default or preferred implementation to be selected by the user (this is the same system the Set Program Access and Defaults controls use). But if I as a user install Google Desktop Search and tell the system I want to use it as the search engine, Vista will override my order and continue to use the Microsoft search engine instead. There's no technical reason to do this, in fact there's every technical reason not to, and the complaint is that Microsoft is artifically restricting it's competitors' non-OS products and favoring it's own in ways it can only do because it controls the OS those products depend on.