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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.'"
It's not unfair because it is entirely possible to write libraries that are not riddled with security flaws. You are trying to relate two things that are almost completely unrelated.
If Chrysler decided to design a car that worked better with specific parts, who would complain. If MS designs their OS so their desktop search works better, great. If Google really wants to be a competitor let them spend all that evil filthy lucre they've amassed and build thier own stinking OS that they can lock MS out of.
Did Chrysler increase their market share by 90% last night? If not, the difference between Chrysler and MS is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist with a very high marketshare of desktop computers while Chrysler is a small player in the US auto market. This means that MS is subject to laws and rules that, in general, Chrysler is not. One of them is leveraging their market share in one market (operating systems) into others (search tools, browsers, etc). If MS is using anticompetitive tactics to render Google's products less capable of working with MS's operating system, to MS's advantage, that could be illegal.
Note that if Chrysler made 95% of the cars on the road, and Chrysler intentionally restricted their cars so that they would only work with Chrysler-blessed stereos, that would be illegal as well.
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.
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.