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Google Says Vista Search Changes Not Enough
akkarin writes "Following Google's complaint to Microsoft regarding Vista's 'desktop search,'
Google claims that Vista's search has not changed enough: 'Google said yesterday that the remedies don't go far enough. Google chief legal officer David Drummond said in a statement, "We are pleased that as a result of Google's request that the consent decree be enforced, the Department of Justice and state attorneys general have required Microsoft to make changes to Vista."'"
Is it really that hard to make an open api with replaceable components. That way google could just plug in their search and have it open to the whole os. MS still seems to be stuck in the monolithic, tightly coupled programming era.
Where were they during the 5 years of Vista's development? Microsoft was touting the integrated, universal search abilities pretty much since day 1 of Vista development. There's no excuse for Google not to know about this, since there were preview and beta builds of Vista available for nearly two years prior to release. If they had a problem with this feature, they should've brought it up then, not 5 months after Vista shipped.
"Google says Vista Search Changes not Enough"
Oh good God fuck off already. I hope Microsoft undoes any planned changes just to put Google back into its place. Now they're just whining like babies. It's an operating system. I can understand concerns over Windows Media Player but the file searching mechanism in Vista is almost a necessity when it comes to finding your files. Since when was including a file finder an antitrust violation?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Look, Google, release your own OS already, and shut up. We know you've been working on one.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You don't understand why they are doing this from a logical perspective or from their "do no evil" perspective? Logically they are attempting to further their own product by attacking a competing product using abuse of the legal system. Seems easy enough to understand although of course it is pretty evil, abusive and all that. So I guess their new motto is "Do no evil unless it gives us money."
Didn't MS also have geek cred back in the day only to lose it as they became a big company?
Well technically its about abusing a monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors.
Microsoft did it previously with Internet Explorer. Since it is bundled with every single copy of windows since I think 95. To Joe Average user seeing a little 'e' icon on the desktop and equating that with the internet is all you need to do in order to gain an unfair advantage over other web browser companies. Since IE doesnt typically catastrophically fail (it only allows every tom, dick and harry spyware maker to put their crap on your machine) most users never see a need to change.
Apply this reasoning to a Vista drive search thing vs Google drive search thing and you can see where this is heading. It's also the reason that Microsoft didnt automatically push Windows Defender onto XP machines. Even though Norton, Avast! or Kapersky is better most people will refuse to use them because they'll see the little windows defender icon and go 'cool theres my anti-virus'.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Sec 12 Para 2: "Vista startup sound must now be sound of someone getting spanked."
Currently bidding on sig
you can't turn it off
YOU CAN.
I quickly discovered that searching it automatically called up MSIE
I have no idea why that happens. I don't have GDS (no need for it), but I tried to set Firefox as the default and EVERYTHING passed to Firefox. Search results from the Start menu, URLs in emails, HTML files, EVERYTHING. The problems actually does seem to be GDS.
I don't get this, either. I'll openly admit to disliking Microsoft and most of their products with a passion, and I'm a happy user of various Google products and services. So it's safe to say that I have a pro-Google/anti-Microsoft bias in general. Still, I don't see why Google or anybody else should have much if any say in the features that Microsoft is allowed to put in their products, as long as Microsoft isn't plagiarizing other folks' stuff.
Would I personally be annoyed by their search feature if I was a Vista user? Maybe, maybe not, but they're not obligated to give me exactly what I want, just like I'm not obligated to buy their product. I happen to have switched over to using a Mac recently (I was previously a hardcore Linux zealot and I still like Linux, but I decided that OS X would fit my needs better for general-purpose use a few months ago, and so far I've been happy with that decision). OS X has its own hardwired-in search feature. I'm free to whine at Apple if I don't like it, they're free to ignore me if they want to, and I'm free to vote with my wallet if I don't like their response. That's the way I think it ought to be, and I don't see why it should be any different with Microsoft/Vista.
If Microsoft does Bad Stuff in their business practices then go after 'em, but I've never seen the logic in forcing them to change their operating system (even back in the old browser war days). I'll accept that using pricing and contracts to try to force their OEM customers to stay away from any other OS vendors may be illegal, anti-competitive and just downright mean, but I don't see anything wrong with Microsoft designing their operating system to not play well with others. I think that hurts them more than anybody else, because it makes folks like me get fed up, wipe their hard drives and install Linux instead, or even go buy Macs rather than facing the prospect of using their next OS release.
I don't understand why this was moderated flamebait. I suppose it could have been worded differently, but there is a valid point. Some people loved Microsoft in the late 80s and early 90s. Microsoft provided the software that was an alternative to Mac OS. People who hated Apple loved it.
Microsoft agreed to make changes. Why push it further? I don't like Microsoft's business practices, but I don't see how google is all that much better as of late.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Yes, it is pretty obvious that the little blue 'e' was an abuse of Microsoft's total control of the OS market but I always though the clear cut, slam dunk antitrust violation in that regard was that they made it impossible to use a different browser to download updates for their OS.
They basically said, "Sorry but you can only get support for our OS if you use our browser..." Now how did that get past the DOJ and why hasn't it been nuked out of Windows since then?
Actually, in all technicality, an OS should include a web browser - without IE for Windows, how do you expect to download from the website Firefox or any other browser?
I've always thought the "browser war" thing was a bad example.
(Before you suggest "have a repository like Synaptic or Yum with all third party browsers and even IE so people have a choice" let me mention three words that'll shoot that down: InstallShield Corporation. Lawsuit)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Has this tagging thing been opened up again?
For a while there, the tags almost meant something.
Max.
Why is everyone calling Google cry-babies? Does no one remember history?
You kids are probably too young to remember Stacker, but basically it was a way of compressing files to increase harddrive space by compressing on-the-fly. They were doing great until Microsoft decided to include a similar product in DOS, and then they were fucked. Victims of Microsoft's "Oh, sorry about including a feature that fucks up your business" mentality.
Obviously, you don't remember your history that well, either, because this case was much worse than you say here. Anti-trust wasn't even a factor in the Stacker case.
MS didn't include a product similar to Stacker in DOS. MS included Stacker itself: they actually copied Stac's code outright. Stac of course sued for copyright infringement et al, and MS finally lost the court case, but it was too late for Stac, which went under. The judgment probably got split up amongst the shareholders, but in the end the company died, and MS had succeeded in putting a perceived competitor out of business as they intended, though it came at a small (to MS) monetary cost.
While I agree with your sentiment, I do have a problem with grown-up software companies walking around acting whiny spoiled children. As much as Microsoft may deserve a "jab in the heart" on some level, Google needs to get over their emotion driven "issues" and move on to more, truly important, things.
At the same time... just because a feature exists out there, doesnt mean microsoft should be barred from copying it. We wouldnt have GUI os's if that were the case.
I'm gonna sue cause I can't replace the window manager with fluxbox. Or maybe if i could just run X11 on top of the NT kernel. =P They are pretty much suing because they can't replace the search entry in your normal folders to be google search. Um,... i kinda agree with everyone that think WTF? It would be nice if every component had a nice API to replace parts. I'd like to replace the start menu for one. But i don't think i should be able to sue because i can't.
Google simply wants to be able to replace the desktop search with the google equivalent. The idea is to give the user a choice which desktop search he wants to use - this doesn't mean just MS or Google but also others like Yahoo would benefit from this. AFAIK the indexing of vista can be disabled but there is currently no way to replace the feature with another application. I personally like the way it is working right now. It's like the old story with the browser and the media player. I wonder why Microsoft doesn't make more of these features as seperate applications that integrate into the system using public apis. It would give them a lot less trouble with the competition and anti-trust battles and it would be easier for them to enhance such features because they aren't integrated so deeply into the system. well, just my 2 cents.
And let me straighten you out.
What if Google were a monopoly and therefore conceivably obligated to start sharing? Well, they fucking aren't.
Thank you, come again.
Google is scared shitless of Vista's search capabilities, and here's why:
Vista Search (which is about 100 times better than Google's Desktop Search) is only one step away from searching ON THE INTERNET, just as it searches on the desktop now.
If Microsoft gets users used to Vista Search, and then makes it easy for people to use that same GUI to search the internet, Google is suddenly out of business overnight.
Google's popularity right now is based largely on momentum and the "fad" of using its name as a verb. Yahoo's search, for example, is pretty damn near as good as Google's. Since Google's entire business model of search supremecy relies on user laziness and momentum (like most monopolies that aren't enforced by governments like utilities, etc) then their ultimate worry is that Microsoft will incorporate search directly into the OS which will be the ultimate "lazy" option for users.
Why do you think Google pays Adobe $1.25 for each download of Flash or Acrobat which default installs their search toolbar? Why do you think Google pays dell 5 dollars for each install of Google toolbar that ships with all Dell computers? Because Google knows that the way to keep their search monopoly is to make it so the user doesn't even HAVE to make a choice of search engine- it will be there in their face when they update Acrobat or buy a new Dell or download Firefox.
But if Microsoft can make it even EASIER for people not to even need a concept of a third party search engine, then Google is finished.
This is why Google will fight this battle to the very end- they will spend every penny in their coffers to try and stop microsoft from getting users to stop thinking of search as a "site you go to" rather than something that is just built into the OS. I mean literally- Google has absolutely nothing to lose by spending every penny they have to fight this- because if they lose, then the company might as well fold up shop and go home.
"MS didn't include a product similar to Stacker in DOS. MS included Stacker itself: they actually copied Stac's code outright"
Wow, that'd be pretty bold of Microsoft, if it were true. How do you know he is right? But of course! He said "Obviously, you don't remember your history that well, either"! He must be right. Let's mod him up!
Of course, actually Microsoft didn't include Stacker "itself", they licensed and included Vertisoft's DoubleDisk, a product competing with Stacker.
Stac of course sued for copyright infringement et al
No, they sued for *patent* infringement on the compression algorithm. I say, however: copyright infringement, patent infringement, it's all the same, who'd notice, right. Microsoft was ordered to remove DoubleDisk, and later on they created DriveSpace, which used different compression method.
I saw, bravo, about contributing to the Microsoft FUD some more. We ought to fight them using any means at all: they're EVIL, right.
Obviously, you don't remember your history that well, either, because this case was much worse than you say here.
The irony...
MS didn't include a product similar to Stacker in DOS. MS included Stacker itself: they actually copied Stac's code outright. Stac of course sued for copyright infringement et al, and MS finally lost the court case, but it was too late for Stac, which went under. The judgment probably got split up amongst the shareholders, but in the end the company died, and MS had succeeded in putting a perceived competitor out of business as they intended, though it came at a small (to MS) monetary cost.
In actual fact, Microsoft v Stac was a patent case and had zero to do with copyright. Software patents are bad, remember, so Stac *should* have lost the case.
Also, as I said elsewhere, what killed Stacker (along with the 3 or 4 other identical programs that were on the market at the time) was plummeting hard disk prices, massive disk growth and a fundamentally fragile-and-prone-to-catastrophic-data-loss application design. Unfortunately for Stac, their buggy whips were no longer a compelling product in the days of the horseless carriage.
Any time they try to do something good, the government steps in and says it's anti-competitive. Meanwhile, Apple and Linux implement similar features and brag about how Windows doesn't have them.
I'm not trying to take sides in the OS wars, but I'm really getting sick of the government bullying Microsoft. If there's anything worse than a company bullying someone, it's the government bullying someone, regardless of who they are.
> "Do no evil unless it gives us money."
c king/
I think you're jumping the gun here. Microsoft is like a fool with a rope; Give 'em enough, and next thing you know they want to be Cowboy Neal. Microsoft has enough money to buy just about any legal outcome they want - and don't fool yourself, they do. Google knows this and is nipping the problem in the bud right now. If they don't, before you know it, you won't even be able to use Google with Vista. Clippy will pop up and direct you to Vista Search instead (or some other such idiotic nonsense that the population seems to lap up). Being that Baldy is going to "Fucking kill Google"* I would be handling this with a wary eye as well. Google is playing it smart.
[*] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/05/chair_chu
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Google will modify its motto to "Do no evil, but let a little justice slip out occasionally" and keep MicroSoft alive.
Why? Because to vanquish would be merciful, and Redmond deserves to wallow in the wreckage of its APIs for as long as possible.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Why push it further? Are you kidding, They should keep pushing it. Each time Microsoft comes up with a remedy, it is so half-assed that it is usually no better than before. They will make it annoying as they can get away with to use any competitor's product. This is exactly what is wrong with a monopolistic business. Their business model has nothing to do with competing for a customer by providing a better product. They use their product to control and limit because most customers do not have another practical choice.
I'm blowing moderator points to be able to respond to this, but why not?
What I don't understand, and of course IANAL so I shouldn't understand this, is where do we draw the line on the anti-monopoly power plays? Look, I can buy the argument that Microsoft went monopolistic all over the Internet Explorer saga. You are completely and entirely correct. The entire thrust of the case, as I understood it at the time, was that Microsoft was abusing it's basis as an operating system by bundling in software, not required in an operating system, so that it could grow market presence.
So, Microsoft puts IE into Windows, which isn't technically required for an operating system (despite Microsoft's attempts to claim it needed IE for it's Explorer subsystem, which was nicely debunked by experts) in order to snare the entire browser market. I read you on that one. I'll even grant your reasoning regarding Windows Defender, since I again don't think that's a core component of an OS.
But I draw the line with this search functionality. In my mind, being able to search your "desktop" (ie, the entire hard drive) for a file or document is something I expect, if not demand, in an operating system. If the filesystem doesn't support indexing and helping me to find a file based on a variety of criteria, I'm looking elsewhere. I know, technically, that searching is also not required for an OS, but the distinction is getting finer and finer. To me, Google is just being sour-grapes about this one. If they can prove Microsoft stole their code, abused their copyright, etc, I agree with them. If they can somehow prove Microsoft is deliberately sabotaging competing searches in the source code so they run abnormally slower compared to the native search, I would probably still side with Google (but my resolve gets much thinner).
But just because they are trying to provide a product that performs the same task as something which likely should be a part of the OS doesn't give them (in my mind) the license to demand Microsoft make changes. Why should Microsoft be forced to completely expose (or disable) their own, internal search subsystem in the OS? If you would rather use Google's search, download the blasted thing and "Just say no" to Microsoft's box on the Start Menu. (The irony, of course, is I recall tons of complaints/flamewars on /. in the past over how OS X was so superior for Spotlight than Windows, and then complaints of how Microsoft "ripped off" Spotlight, etc.)
I just don't see how this is the same as Microsoft defaulting the email program to Outlook Express, or the browser to Internet Explorer. Those are separate programs that aren't related to the OS itself, and Microsoft pushed it past the limit by bundling that sort of software and promoting it within Windows. Searching for files, though, should be something that is integral to the OS's file system - and competitors should be welcome to compete, but not get special privileges for doing so.
Wouldn't this be similar to someone like Symantec threatening Microsoft with litigation because Symantec provides a file system defragmenter (in SystemWorks), and Microsoft has a button in Explorer that will start Microsoft's own built-in defragmenter? Maybe Symantec is upset that there's no way for the user to disable Microsoft's, or to make Windows use Symantec's as the default. If Google can do it - so can Symantec. And so goes the contrapositive, also.
Speaking of which, when should we be hearing Google going after Apple for Spotlight? Oh wait - Spotlight has an API that allows anyone to write software to interface with the underlying OS searching capabilities. Which brings me to my question: Would that access (as unlikely as it might be in forthcoming) to Vista searching be enough to satsify Google? If it isn't, than Google's motivations are clearly suspect.
LondovirLondovir
It boils down to Microsoft is a monopoly and illegally abused its monopoly. It now has to operate under different rules. Sure it sucks, but that's what they get for breaking the law. Google is simply trying to force Microsoft to operate under the special rules.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Command Prompt FTP? Although that's certainly an option, I really don't think that would fly with Microsoft's majority target marget... If you meant Windows Explorer FTP, that's provided by IE so I wouldn't use that as an example.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You're right. F*ck M$ for bundling IE. I use their bundled FTP client...
I'm not pro-M$, I'm anti-hypocrite.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
With IE (or Firefox, or any web browser), the work is trivial. All the browser has to do is to form an HTTP request and send it. The result page can be highlighted with the keywords if the browser supports it (Maxthon, and I presume an extension to Firefox, do the job).
The work with desktop search is non-trivial, however. The options aren't the same, the results aren't presented in the same way. GDS uses a web interface, MS search uses an Explorer interface. Sure, it *can* possibly be done, but I can't see any justification for bringing anti-trust into this -- or even why it *should* be done. It would involve a hell of a lot of work, for one.
Next we'll have a company requesting that the TCP/IP stack be replaceable, another saying that the audio stack should be replaceable, and finally a request for the entire kernel to be replaceable. All of these *can*, very theoretically, be done.
I am someone appauled that some of you still dont get it. Google's bitching to Redmond is the exact same thing as if they went to Torvalds say "We want in or we cry to Mommy". If you code your own OS, but by George you better not have an integrated file search program or you might find Google knocking down your door. Are YOU obligated to provide Google anything? Of course you are not, and neither should Microsoft.
Google capitalized on some areas where Microsoft's offerings were lackluster or nonexistent. Thats cool.
Now the gravy train has run out and Google shouldnt have a case. Its offerings are not as great as Microsoft's and Microsoft should not be forced into supporting it. As long as they dont break patent laws, let them do whatever the hell they want since it is legally their code.
For the record I would love to see each and every Windows OS replaced with Linux.
I won't complain too loudly when one of my least favorite companies gets kicked in the corporate nuts a bit, but I don't get the rationale behind some of the different rules that they need to operate under.
I get that they're evil monopolistic bastages and have earned restrictions and punishments because of their business practices, but some of the "feature" restrictions (i.e., regarding Internet Exploder and this search feature) have never quite made sense to me. Maybe that's just because I don't have a deep enough understanding of the circumstances of their evil monopolistic bastagism, and probably never will because I don't like spending a lot of time reading or thinking about their stuff. Their efforts to not be interoperable annoy me and induce me to spend my money elsewhere when I have the option, but I've never felt that those specific anti-social behaviors were particularly unethical. I figure that Exploder and the like can fail on its own merits, and I'll just happily use Firefox or whatever other browser I feel like using. Or go buy a different OS if I don't like theirs, with the assistance of the legal spanking that makes it harder for them to keep me from doing that.
Yeah, I'm nit-picking here... I agree that they've earned some punishment, but I'm just quibbling about some specific actions and consequences which make me scratch my head, amongst all of their other clearly wrong behavior and well-earned punishment.
In addition to leveraging its monopoly position on 98% of the world's PCs to instantly create overwhelming market share for IE almost instantly in 1997, [...]
Except that's not what *actually* happened.
The first version of IE to really start taking marketshare off Navigator, was IE4. At the time, IE4 was only available via download (or through your ISP, magazine covers, etc - the point being it wasn't included in Windows).
IE4 surpassed Navigator in marketshare some time in 1999. *Long* before anything close to a majority of end users had changed to Windows 98.
There was no "manufacturered" demand for IE via the "monopoly position". The demand was generated by the market, because IE4 was better than Navigator (3 at the time, but also 4 when it came out). When you look at the actual patterns of IE takeup, this is blatantly obvious, because the version of IE that was destroying Navigator in the marketplace was doing so in a way that could not be related to its integration into Windows.
[...] MS also added proprietary extensions to IE to distort the market of the web itself. That allowed MS to kill Netscape's revenue from servers.
In actual fact, this was a tactic Netscape was using to lock-in their Navigator client to proprietry extensions of their server product. Microsoft's extensions were all client-side and, at the time, this was considered completely normal in the fast-paced world of browser development.
IE didn't compete with Netscape as a product until Netscape itself began to fail with the fiasco of Communicator 4. IE 1-3 were junk. IE 4-6 were better than what Netscape offered only because the company had been vanquished and was no longer offering anything.
Utter tripe. IE3 was a quite capable alternative to Navigator 3, although it was never really popular due to Navigator's inertia. When IE4 was released in 1997, Navigator dominated the browser market with something like 80% - 90% marketshare. IE4, being at the time vastly superior to Navigator, started taking marketshare off it - *long* before Windows 98 was ever released.
Netscape was in a commanding position when IE4 was released. They were driving the industry. Then, instead of making a better product (resulting in the disaster that was Navigator 4) they chose to expend money and effort playing stupid legal games.
Microsoft didn't _need_ to "kill" Netscape - Netscape did a perfectly good job of committing suicide.
Google faces the same impossible leverage.
Yes, Google does face the same situation. They are market leaders whose product has essentially been unmatched, now having to go up against an alternative that is, by all reports, much better. No wonder they're running to the Government for help.
While MS can "compete" against Google desktop or browser tools, it can't compete in web search and marketing. So it is using its monopoly desktop position to roll out integrated search that can't be disabled or replaced by third party vendors. Once MS establishes market share on the basis of disposable PCs being replaced, and not consumer choice, it can then start directing all web search to its own servers exclusively.
More tripe.
Google currently has to fund Mozilla's Firefox to the tune of about $50 million a year to maintain an alternative browser. That reminds one of the fact that the only competition to Windows on the desktop PC is Linux, which is free. Microsoft has still managed to prevent OEMS from bundling it.
Microsoft don't "prevent" OEMs from bundling Linux, they don't bundle it because hardly anyone is interested in buying it.
There is no free market in PC desktop OSs (Apple could not sign up OEMs, and even the free Linux struggles to gain adoption)
Heh, now that's comedy. Blaming Apple single-sourcing MacOS X hardware on Microsoft.
There is no free market in desktop application suites (Office is rivaled mainly by free OpenOffice)
Not sure why this was modded insightful; maybe you and all the mods slept through the late '90s. Microsoft wasn't rebuked for bundling a Web browser; rather, the main complaints were:
(1) The browser could not be reasonably uninstalled (perhaps minor complaint, although it was always running, and sucking resources even when not in use)
(2) Microsoft leveraged its monopoly position to create deals with OEMs such that they could not have Windows licenses unless they agreed NOT to bundle Netscape or other competing browsers in the default install. (the more major complaint, IMO, since it's a pretty clear example of leveraging a monopoly position to prevent competition)
In this situation, I would absolutely argue that an operating system should include robust search (it's perhaps more pertinent to the core function than a web browser); just that Microsoft ought not to put in any booby traps that prevent Google's thing from running, and not try to prevent OEMs from installing it if they want to.
Therefore, personally, I'm of the opinion of many here...I can't entirely agree with Google, but what goes around comes around. Microsoft stuck it to Netscape in kind of a bad way, and they deserve some payback, eventually (especially as the whole DOJ thing was kind of a farce).
gameDB
You make a couple comments that are technically true, but gloss over details to an absurd degree.
"IE4 surpassed Navigator in marketshare some time in 1999." Who cares? The real fact to consider is that IE resulted in an immediate plunge in Netscape's market share, from over 80% in 1996 to being a minority a year later. That's leverage. Part of that leverage in 1997 was MS using threats of delaying Office for Mac to get Apple to sign an exclusive deal to only put IE on the Mac desktop.
--
Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered
"In July of 1997, the ongoing rivalry between Apple and Microsoft appeared to vanish with the announcement a new cooperative partnership. Why did Microsoft invest millions in a partnership with its most obvious remaining competitor in the desktop operating system market? "
--
MS didn't have to "surpass" anyone in market share immediately, it only had to suffocate Netscape and destroy its cross-platform strategy so there were no choices left. After there is no choice, MS is your choice.
I agree that Netscape screwed up its own game. However, MS not only put a bullet into Netscape's head, but further monopolized the browser market, to the point where the only competitors since have been a free project and a few niche micro-minorities: Opera on mobiles, and Safari on the Mac. That is not an open market.
Your comments about there being no market for Linux or Mac OS X on PCs fallacious; if you don't know how OEM contracts work, go look it up. There is no open market for PC OS and hasn't been since the early 90s. Apple could not find licensees the same way Linux can't get OEMs to offer it outside of a token hobbyist offering. Those contracts were all tied up by MS.
Nothing is free. If you want the browser to be free, and MS to provide it, you are inviting MS to run your desktop. Good for you, I don't care. The problem is that the market should not be dominated by any player with the ability to set prices and prevent innovation, particularly not the tech market.
You can also support mob protection for your block because they do such a good job, but that doesn't mean the world shouldn't enforce racketeering laws. Most of us don't want to live in a shitty world run by thugs.
You provide a good example of someone with an argument but without much grasp of what has happened, is happening, or will happen if the status quo is maintained. That makes your arguments, which are easy to pull apart, simply not worth very much.
How long will it take before the "Google are the good guy's" sentiment is going to wear thin?
It has worn thin. We've wised up. We now realize what each and every person is to Google. People and their personal information is nothing more than a way for Google to make money.
Google uses you. Not the other way around.
Who cares?
Anyone who's interested in information other that parroted anti-Microsoft FUD.
The real fact to consider is that IE resulted in an immediate plunge in Netscape's market share, from over 80% in 1996 to being a minority a year later.
Rubbish. It took years for IE to displace Navigator. In 1999, the market was only just starting to see IE use exceed Navigator use. Further, Navigator's decline lines up exactly with its increasing levels of suckiness.
That's leverage.
Indeed. The "leverage" of a superior product. Cunning and dastardly work, to be sure.
Part of that leverage in 1997 was MS using threats of delaying Office for Mac to get Apple to sign an exclusive deal to only put IE on the Mac desktop.
Undoubtedly without that extra 1% or so of marketshare such a deal represented, IE would have been an abject failure.
"In July of 1997, the ongoing rivalry between Apple and Microsoft appeared to vanish with the announcement a new cooperative partnership. Why did Microsoft invest millions in a partnership with its most obvious remaining competitor in the desktop operating system market? "
I've read the site before and it is an excellent example of anti-Microsoft FUD and conspiracy theories. Presumably you're quoting it here to take advantage of the general anti-Microsoft sentiment of Slashdot.
I agree that Netscape screwed up its own game.
Which is all that really matters, given that most of your arguments are hanging off the example of Netscape's failure being somehow due to underhanded and/or illegal Microsoft machinations.
However, MS not only put a bullet into Netscape's head, but further monopolized the browser market, to the point where the only competitors since have been a free project and a few niche micro-minorities: Opera on mobiles, and Safari on the Mac. That is not an open market.
At which time in the past were you thinking of when the browser "market" _wasn't_ made up of one or two giants and a handful of "micro-niche minorities" ? First there was Mosaic, then there was Navigator and Mosaic, then there was Navigator and IE, then there was IE, now there is IE and Firefox.
How is the current situation in any way unusual, given the history of the web browser ?
Your comments about there being no market for Linux or Mac OS X on PCs fallacious; if you don't know how OEM contracts work, go look it up.
Then why aren't people out there raking in money hand-over-fist selling PCs running Linux, if the demand is so high ? Forget the major sellers, if - as you imply - people are desparate to buy Linux PCs, why aren't there dozens of startups selling them as fast as they can put them together ?
There is no open market for PC OS and hasn't been since the early 90s.
It has always been trivial to buy a PC with the OS you want, or without an OS at all.
Apple could not find licensees the same way Linux can't get OEMs to offer it outside of a token hobbyist offering. Those contracts were all tied up by MS.
Ridiculous. The last time Apple licensed clone Macs it nearly killed them. While Macs are much more competitively priced these days, significantly reducing the likelihood of that happening again, "whitebox Macs" would work directly against the main things that makes Apple "cool" - exclusivity and perceived premium.
Steve Jobs has *zero* interest in Macintoshes being sold by anyone except Apple. Unlike you, he has an excellent understanding of what it is that makes Apple successful, and why people buy (or covet) Apple products. I only wish I'd had more money on hand to plough into Apple stock back in '97 when he took over as CEO.
Nothing is free. If you want the browser to be free, and MS to provide it, you are inviting MS to run your desktop.
I don't care who provides it. I use Firefox on all my PCs, regardless of whether they're running Windows, Linux, OS X, S
I get that Google's peeved and everything -- but since when did it become improper for an OS to index the harddrive? Why should Microsoft allow that to be disabled?! What, then, if GDS is uninstalled later on and Vista search doesn't start back up, for example? It just seems like a basic thing that should be part of an OS.
Well, what if all image formats opened in Paint when you click on them, and there was no way to disable that? Adobe would be allowed to put a hook into Paint itself, so that after loading in Paint, it could then also pop up Photoshop. That's pretty much the equivalent situation.
This is blatantly ridiculous. People are not stupid, and they'd spot this, and Microsoft are simply not dumb enough to try it. Collecting this sort of data would at least require a waiver in the OS licence, and I guarantee you that if it were there you'd have heard about it by now.
This is pretty much exactly what they're asking; the issue is whether this should be a replaceable element of the operating system. Obviously file indexing is a pretty core function of most modern operating systems, and it's not like Apple have announced plans to allow users to replace Spotlight or anything, and I doubt that would be easy on a technical level.
It's an interesting issue in any case. Making it replaceable when it's hooked so closely into the system is technically difficult (especially when it's not a core requirement of the system) and offers very little in terms of tangible benefits. The main issue, though, is that Vista's release schedule was so long that third-party replacements such as Google Desktop Search had appeared to provide this functionality on top of the existing system.
Well, come now. Tell me you didn't expect - "install linux" as a response to this?!
... or something): If you buy a car with 4 seats and only use 2 do you complain that the company welded the seat stanchions in?
Optional - check, you don't have to buy a MS OS.
Removable - check, logically and physically removable.
So I'm also going to go with a car analogy just to finish off nicely (incidentally in Soviet Russia your posts finish you off with some hot grits
Everyone is saying Google is in the wrong here, but I can't see how. Google isn't saying Vista shouldn't include a search engine, it's saying it should be possible to replace it with a competing search engine. At the moment (if I read this right, I dunno for sure I dont have Vista) you can install Google's Desktop search, but Vistas search will continue to index thus slowing the computer down. To any non-tech-savy user this is going to look like Google's software is at fault, but the system is actually doing twice as much.
Google is right to kick up a fuss about this, coz M$ has pretty much (indirectly) stopped people using Google software by using their OS monopoly.
Ponder me this riddle:
What search would you rather use:
1.) a search designed by a company that makes money by selling you an OS, and therefore includes a search engine as a feature to help sales, or
2.) a search designed by a company that makes money by saving your search results and serving you targeted spam?
How about some facts?
Look at Wikipedia's reports of various market share stats for that period. There is no controversy that Netscape's market share plunged in 1997. Now look up the browser MS shipped in 1997. It was not a superior product competing in the market place, because nobody chose IE; they got it by default.
Sure, after MS set up a barrier to Netscape's business plan, it could then invest more into browser development. After 1997, Netscape could do very little, while MS rapidly released three major new versions in 97, 99, and 2001.
What needs to be noted is what happened after AOL/Netscape/Mozilla stopped delivering anything as a competitor. Microsoft, without any further need to take the browser market, froze development of the browser for half a decade. Another version of IE wasn't delivered until 2006, and only because Firefox was starting to compete again.
You can say all you want about what "Steve Jobs" wants or knows, but since you can't understand why anticompetitive behavior and monopoly maintenance are bad for markets, I also have to assume you know nothing about what was going on inside Apple.
We also know, because Jobs announced it, that Jobs did try to sign fair contracts with cloners, and we also know (those of us that do) that Jobs entertained the idea of broadly licensing Rhapsody and YellowBox for Windows. That was NeXT's business model, and Apple tried to maintain it under the name Apple Enterprise.
The problem was that OEMs like HP and Dell would have nothing to do with Apple because Microsoft threatened to raise their Windows OEM prices dramatically if they did. Dell even scrambled to move its web store from NeXT's WebObjects to Microsoft's ASP after Apple bought NeXT.
Linux faces the same barriers to competition, but largely lacks the marketing muscle of Apple, making it even more difficult to line up and offerings of Linux on name brand hardware. Dell's placeholder Linux offerings are quite obviously bullshit, and as was recently reported, it will not sell them to businesses at all. Why not?
You have sassy comebacks for all sorts of things, but they are all based on fact free assertions. You also seem happiest when building strawmen and asserting your victory in ripping them apart. I did not admit any problems in a "primary argument" I never made. Instead, I linked to the article I wrote where one of the main points was that Netscape failed due to its own problems, both in strategy and in development.
Microsoft used Netscape's weakness in order to dominate the market, tying the web platform to its monopoly on the desktop and injecting proprietary extensions in order to make web apps require IE on Windows. That prevented any opportunity for competition, and ended any vehicle for Sun's Java. MS pretended to support Java on its own browser, but only with the intent of leading Sun down a dark hallway and shooting it when out of sight. That helped prevent any sort of meaningful cross platform way to deliver applications.
If you can't fathom a link between "no competition" and "no innovation," and want me to list innovations that are being prevented by anti-competitive behavior, I'll have to leave it at that, because there's no point in arguing with someone who willfully chooses to be obtuse. You may as well demand proof for the roundness of the Earth, evidence of man-made climate change, or a complete study on why dumping more war into Iraq won't solve the problems.
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Web Browser Wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer
I'm not sure Google cares that much about desktop search per se. They probably think they can do a better job of it than Microsoft, but assuming Vista provided equal access to the desktop search database, I don't thing Google would care that much.
The real point, and where Vista *is* anticompetitive is that the built-in search wants to integrate Microsoft's version of Internet search into the built-in desktop search viewer. Internet search is not a feature of the OS - or any desktop OS I know of, and there's no reason Microsoft should be able to use their desktop monopoly to make it look like their internet search is built-in while other engines are added on. In the light of past anticompetitive behavior and agreements, that's not legal.
It appears that the hooks between desktop search and an internet search engine *have* been built into Vista, and there's no good reason other than the anticompetitive one for the relevant API's to be limited to Microsoft.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Where are those ads you speak of? Oh that's right, next to the search results!
You are mistaken, extremely so. When you are browsing various websites the ads that you see are targeted, not everyone is getting the same ad. Basically the website pays Google to tell the website which banner ad to show you. And of course Google uses the website's query to keep track of your browsing habits and further develop their profile. You do not need to search to be profiled. And of course, Google is not alone in this business, and *that* is what all this fighting is about, *not* about who gets to fulfill your search.