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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?"
The is the whole point of a "monopoly position", they didn't just make a product, they eliminated all other reasonable alternatives to their product, creating an artificially high price.
How exactly did they "eliminate alternatives" - did they use thugs and tommy guns? Ohh -- you mean they made a superior product, and made contractual obligations with their resellers. *gasp*
Could someone translate the above post to English please?
If you don't know what "fundamental", "traditional", "notion", "platform", "operating system", "API", "proprietary", "client/server", "ubiquitous", "standards based", "commoditize", "scalable", "infrastructure", "capital expenses" or "operating expenses" mean, then the whole discussion of cloud computing is probably not relevant to you.
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean it doesn't try to associate itself with OSS for marketing purposes while witholding source code.
... and then they built the supercollider.