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Los Angeles Goes Google Apps With Microsoft Cash
Dan Jones writes "The Los Angeles City Council has approved a US$7.25 million, five-year deal with Google in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. Interestingly, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft (Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit by six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software). The city will migrate from Novell GroupWise e-mail servers. For security, Google will provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud' to store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies. This GovCloud would be encrypted and 'physically and logically segregated' from Google's standard applications. Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?"
But, IIRC, most of these cases had to do with Microsoft strong-arming OEMS (Dell,HP, etc) by forcing them to only ship Windows and Office on their computers.
"Strong-arming" how? Did they have guns? Automatic or semi-auto?
Ohh, right, you mean Microsoft said that unless Dell agrees to the terms of their contract, they would not sign the contract. *gasp* How horrible of them to not let Dell have their business without agreeing to the terms of their contract!
"You can't ship Linux on your computers unless you agree that 99% of your computers have Windows installed, regardless of what your customers ask for", and you say "No! I will not agree to that!"
If Dell refused Microsoft's terms, then Microsoft loses Dell's business, which would also be a huge loss for them. They both lose if they can't agree to a deal.
That's anti-competitive behavior
What does "anti-competitive" means? Care to define it in clearly concrete terms? If you believe force was applied - how? in what way? where are the guns?
No rights were violated. Nobody was forced to sign a contract at gun point, by a thug, or otherwise blackmailed. No fraud was committed. This is the free market. In the same way McDonald's demands its beef suppliers do exclusive business with them, and my company demands its resellers do exclusive business with us in order to get our products at a discount, Microsoft did the same. That is the definition of a free market - a market free of force, in which rights are violated. Anti-trust legislation is force, and violates the rights of those at Microsoft to set the terms of their agreements.
Aha, I see what you did there. You strung a load of meaningless buzzwords together! Very clever! Monetize. Synergy. Methodology. Reactive. Transitional.
Except those are all perfectly good words with clear meanings. When people deride them, the only assumption I can make is that they've not taken the time to understand them.
FFS, someone once tried to tell me that "paradigm" was a pointless buzzword, because it could always be substituted with "idea". He was a halfwit.
Likewise, "cloud computing" has a meaning, which its detractors ceaselessly seem to ignore or misrepresent.