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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.'"
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.
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'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.
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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.
Verbal contracts are all well and good but unless they have a DUNS and register with the CCR, and use those to get on the schedule the DoD can pretty much give them the finger and they have no recourse. Sounds like someone at Google didn't do their homework on getting DoD jobs.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
This is what happens when you have a monopoly like the Department of the Interior. I think it's about time one of us started a department to compete with them and keep them honest.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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
A plaintiff company Onix apparently does have a GSA Schedule 70 and provides solutions based on google docs. Since they (google) are not providing the service directly, however, they shouldn't need one. According to the complaint, the companies have been courting this since june 2009, so there was plenty of time to get one if they needed it. The deal is that when the RFQ went out, it was specifically worded such that google docs were not a usable cloud platform, even though google docs is FISMA certified, which was the DOI's primary complaint to them in the first place (or so they claim in the filing).
It depends. A perfectly reasonable RFP could include things that only lead to one technology being considered. For instance I have a VMWare cluster that uses Intel 5500 and 5600 CPU's, if I needed additional capacity without impacting my existing cluster I could write and RFP that stated that Intel 5500 and above parts which work with VMWare EVC (function masking) with my existing cluster be used. This would specify that Intel CPU's be used but would allow bidding from Dell, HP, Cisco, IBM, and Oracle and their resellers. I see nothing fundamentally wrong with such an RFP, but then I work in the private sector where picking the best technology for our needs is not only legal but often mandatory.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
No kidding. I'm currently working on part of the delivery of a $1b+ tender where a dimension is specified to not exceed a given length to an accuracy of 0.5mm. This is on a device that is over 5 meters in length. Gaming the list of potential bidders/suppliers? That would be unethical, and also illegal in many jurisdictions. Stating your requirements with a high degree of precision? Nothing wrong with that!
People who write these kinds of things are well aware of what they can and can't do or say and still have no problems in making sure that their preferred supplier wins the contract without breaching the letter of the law. The spirit of the law, on the other hand, was declared dead a long time ago.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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.
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".
I don't particularly like Google as a company.
Compared to Microsoft!
Does Google's professional mail solution support S/MIME? Gmail doesn't, and it's a gaping hole in their messaging offering when compared to pretty much any popular messaging application on the market.
Disclaimer: I work for USGS/DOI.
Yes, that amongst other things. One big aspect of any federal government purchase is the requirement of encryption, and not just any encryption, but FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption systems. As far as I know, Gmail does not support that, while Exchange does.
What's more, about 1/2 the DOI has an MS Exchange-based email system, while the other have (at least the few bureaus that I know of) use a Lotus Notes-based system. So, the idea with this transition is to merge into one solution with the assumption it will be cheaper. (Will it be cheaper? Who knows...)
From what I understand, the Networx transition in DOI underwent a similar problem where the contract was awarded to the incumbent (Verizon) and this resulted in protests.
Overall I like FIPS 140-2 because it means I'm less likely to be sold a snake-oil security product, although it drives up costs inordinately. One example: I just purchased 5 2GB USB drives, for $250. The FIPS compliant price $50/unit where an off-the-shelf USB drive costs ~$8.
All things told, I would love to have a Gmail solution, but until they get FIPS 140-2 compliance, I'm stuck with MS Exchange...sad though it may be.
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.
Actual machinist/toolmaker here:
"Ordinary machining techniques are good down to 0.1%"
*a dark cloud appears above my head* I'll try to bite my lip and be civil about this. .1% for a 25.4mm part is .0254mm, (1 inch, and .001 inch respectively, for SAE). Charles Babbage was able to meet that tolerance with the tools of the time - the builders of the modern Difference Engine empirically found they could indeed do so. When the Difference Engine was built using his old plans, they decided to take on the argument that Babbage couldn't possibly build his Difference Engine due to lack of technology. They found that argument to be bogus. Depending on what you're doing, that kind of tolerance these days may as well be plus or minus a mile, especially if you're sending something to be ground. With superfinishing (Supfina Inc., North Kingstown RI (my childhood hometown)) you're looking at microns or smaller.
Affordable glass scales and ballscrew retrofits have even made manual machining a lot more accurate. Drill 2 holes 500mm apart plus or minus .02 mm? All I've got is a rebuilt Bridgeport with glass scales? I've got AC that doesn't blow directly on the machine tool and shrink one side of it? NO PROBLEM.
Am I insulted? Yeah, a little bit. Bring coffee into the shop next time. Thanks.
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BMO
l Postscript: Yesterday's thread about math made me angry, but since it was mobbed I didn't bother contributing. But I have to say this, yeah sure a lot of people go through their lives with just arithmetic, percentages, and a rough idea of area and volume. But if you want to build anything *interesting,* you'd better have paid attention to your geometry, trig, and calc teachers. Yeah, sure, computers do a lot of the bull-work calculation, but it's a good idea to have a good idea.
There are various client-side plugins which support S/MIME for Gmail (which is actually the right place to do it). See Gmail S/MIME and other similar plugins.
http://www.donarmstrong.com