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Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Late last week, Google sued the US government for putting out a Request For Quotation for the messaging needs of the Department of the Interior that specified only Microsoft solutions would be considered. Google apparently had spent plenty of time talking to DOI officials to understand their needs and make sure they had a solution ready to go — and were promised that there wasn't a deal already in place with Microsoft. And then the RFQ came out. Google protested, but the protest was dismissed, with the claim that Google was 'not an interested party.'"
It's one of those bureaucratic loopholes. Without the GSA schedule and number, you can be dismissed from any offering regardless of how much time you put in. Did they really not have one? Almost seems like a bad oversight.
Honestly though, even if they did can they really think that suing the gov't over some minor app is going to win tons of dollars and contracts? Every spec can be written in the future in such a way to exclude a companies abilities ad infinitum.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I'm pretty sure that's not what "interested party" means legally in this context. But that being said...
Wasn't there an article on /. last week to the effect that they were now an Irish or whatever non-US country it was corporation for tax purposes?
So basically, your approach would be to let your direct competitor AND arch enemy get away with their corruption and greed and walk all over you for fear that they might walk all over you again with their corruption and greed.
Your message: Don't fight the status quo because if you don't things will remain the same...
Really, grow a spine, it is all the rage these days.
Asking for a MS only solution in an open bid is NOT an open bid. If I make an open bid for cars as long as they are made by ford, then it is not open. And governments should NOT do this kind of job unless they want the outraged citizens to march to the capitol and... oooh Idols is on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It defeats the whole purpose of a bidding system to state that only one company will be considered for bidding. I might be wrong here but I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Which is probably why they are suing.
Thanks to years of being "open for business"... probably not starting with, but vastly increasing during the Bush W Administration (and not being brought back under control with Obama admin), the Department of the Interior has been almost thoroughly corrupted and captured.
It's not surprising that they are the target of lawsuit... what's sad is that they aren't sued by regular citizens for abdication of their purpose in search of bribes and kickbacks from Industry.
I wish Google best of luck in turning the stone on this cockroach-infested den of iniquity.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It is pretty amusing, because I have repeatedly seen government (and corporate) IT talk about avoiding Macs because they are a Single Source Solution: you can't buy Macs from anyone but Apple, so you are locked into dealing with only one vendor. Then these same people would turn around and specify Microsoft Windows solutions. Precisely how many vendors do they think make Microsoft Windows?
If any of these people were honestly interested in avoiding vendor lock-in, they would require that all solutions be free and open source software. And preferably "open source hardware," if there actually can be said to be such a thing.
It's not at all the same. In a no-bid contract, they just award the contract to Microsoft. Here they had a bid! It's just that one of the requirements is that the bidder be Microsoft! TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The Interior Department was the most corrupt department (that we know of) during the Bush/Cheney administration. It was the main feeding grounds for Jack Abramoff, centered on using Indian tribes to grab casino industry money. It was the Interior Department's MMS office that traded favors to oil corps for coke and hookers, then let BP drill the Gulf despite its obvious contempt for safety, and let it slide through the resulting Macondo Well blowout through this Summer.
"Most corrupt department" was the hardest fought competition this whole decade, and it's clearly continued even after Bush/Cheney left. I am not at all surprised that the Interior Department is in bed with another monopoly disserving the people it's supposed to protect.
--
make install -not war
I couldn't visualize it from the description, but this video shows how it works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UesbkO3NvoY
Pretty crazy. It'll come down to whether they can actually make something like that reliable.
A lot of discussion on "How come only Microsoft".
While I agree it's not "competitive", I think they are looking for bids on hosting a Microsoft based solution - not Microsoft, the company, providing the hosting
There are a lot of consulting firms out there that provide MS only solutions, which is what the DOI is asking for, not that MS being the implementors of said solution.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
Been there, done that. One of my former employers essentially bet the company on a federal RFP that was seeking POSIX compliance on diskless workstations. We worked our butts off to develop a solution using SCO Unix (back in the days before SCO decided to go into litigation as a business model), but even though it met all the requirements, the contract was awarded to the incumbent, who bid Windows NT -- with some kind of POSIX plug-in. We protested (the loser always protests), but we lost. Maybe it'll turn out better for a deep-pocketed company like Google.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
They aren’t restricting the bidding to only Microsoft... third-party contractors could bid on it as long as they were going to use Microsoft’s products.
Basically, they’re trying to avoid taking the low bid and then at the end of the contract finding out that all of the workstations are running some free flavour of Linux that isn’t supported and none of their employees know how to use. It’s reasonable from that perspective, although cutting Google out of the mix probably still wasn’t really the smartest move.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Which certainly isn't considering all options. A Microsoft only option leaves out a huge portion of the market that might be able to come up with a cost savings and a more secure solution using a free software infrastructure. How is it good for the economy and the U.S. as a nation sticking with a single vendor?
There are lots of ford dealerships. DOI should be looking for email/office/whatever with X requirements, not an email solution from X.
It seems pretty clear that the Governments primary objection was to the fact that the servers providing service would have to be run by Google instead of by the government. Google simply said "you don't need to have the servers on site to be secure, don't worry about it!" I'm not sure that the RFQ was done correctly, but their true concerns are valid. I wouldn't want any government services hosted in anyones cloud, the chance for abuse is huge.
This is probably the only lawsuit I read about on Slashdot that I am going to support. Well done Google. And DOI must be lacking some sense these days to call it RFQ when they specified they will only consider bids from one company.
Then set as one of your bidding requirements that A) no retraining be needed (outlook interfaces with google apps....) or B) retraining be included. Let the vendor find a solution to your problems; dont simply say "there is no solution and we dont want you to get into a bidding war".
How many people have firm opinions that the government did something wrong here - show of hands please?
How many people know the differences between an RFQ, RFP, and an IFB? Why did so many hands go down?
Seriously, an RFQ is a tool to arrive at market price for a defined solution, and it is non-binding.
An RFP is a request for respondents to define a solution, the Gov't is open to various solutions.
And an IFB is an Invitation To Bid - this is where the Gov't picks a vendor for a defined solution based on price.
Every response i see here has these three different documents conflated... I suggest you look here for guidance:
http://www.onvia.com/b2g-resources/article/responding-to-an-ifb-rfp-rfq-do-you-know-the-difference
Ken
You write up an RFP when you know your problem and you need a solution. Language often specifies a technology, but allows for equivalent substitutions. Protests often happen over debate of what qualifies as equivalent, but if the DOI was looking for a solution, they would write an RFP.
But they weren't looking for a solution, they were looking for a vendor, and already knew what solution they wanted. That's when you write an RFQ, specify exactly the technology you want and then let everyone submit pricing. The disadvantage is that you have to choose the low quotation. In an RFP, you do not have to take the low proposal, even in the public sector.
So it might feel wrong, but way before the RFQ was even written the DOI determined that they wanted the Microsoft solution and just wanted pricing. Google lost before it even started. Which is probably short sighted by the DOI, but well within the law. As a public sector person who deals with this, it's not easy to get what you know you need at a price you want. Most public entities aren't being corrupt, but like someone else mentioned, the spirit of the law has long been lost and both sides spend inordinate amounts of time and money just trying to game the system. Like the vendor who protested that his 7200rpm SATA drive SAN was equivalent to the 15k SAS version and that he won on price... ugh.