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Google Drops Cloud Lawsuit Against US Government
jfruhlinger writes "A year ago, Google sued the U.S. government because the government's request for proposals for a cloud project mandated Microsoft Office; Google felt, for obvious reasons, that this was discriminatory. Google has now withdrawn the suit, claiming that the Feds promised to update their policies (PDF) to allow Google to compete. The only problem is that the government claims it did no such thing."
It appears Google's Jedi mind tricks won't work on the US government.
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This entire story will be riddled with speculations.
There is Google, ONIX Networking Corp., Microsoft, US federal government (U.S. Department of the Interior), there are too many known and unknown unknowns (to para-quote the former minister of Offense).
It could be that there is private dealing between Google and MS or between Google and the federal gov't. There could be issues surrounding ONIX. There could be anything, from government threats to personal threats. Too many unknown variables.
Thus this is a perfect story, because all comments will be interesting.
You can't handle the truth.
Looks like their open-door policy with the DOJ just got them in trouble. Don't be evil--be brutal.
The option to not bid on the project. This is like me requesting bids from contractors to paint my house and a contractor suing me because he doesn't like the color I picked. TFB, don't bid, and have a nice day.
Mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.
I really want to like Google Docs (especially since I have a good friend who works on them at Google). But as someone who uses excel constantly in my job, and Google Spreadsheets a lot for personal use, there's just no comparison. There's zero possibility of doing what I need to do in gDocs, sadly.
it's printed on, when one is dealing w/ those whose given word is meaningless, and who don't understand the commitment of a firm handshake.
Should have gotten it in writing, w/ formal signature, from someone w/ the authority to make that commitment.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Obama should simply invite everyone over for pizza and beer!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Google is making inroads into the government even without the lawsuit. NOAA is in the process of migrating to Gmail/Calendar/Docs, after Google won a fair competition with multiple other vendors. I can only assume Microsoft was one of those. GSA has already moved to Google.
I suspect it is more a case that Google's lawsuit got government agencies' attention, so now they are putting out their requests for quotes without the MS assumptions. Google accomplished what they wanted (aside from being allowed to bid on this particular contract), without going to trial. Kudos to them for withdrawing and not wasting everyone's time and taxpayer dollars.
Someone at google forgot to send the government the new policies they wrote for them.
As I was reading this article, I noticed that my ad on the right side was for Office 365.
Do you really think that Google will replace Microsoft and do the same job? I don't think so...
In the last 15 years that I've been working full time with all sort of products (Microsoft, Apple, Google...), I can say that even if Microsoft's products are not necessarily the best products taken one by one, all together they are excellent.
I've been trying to work with Gmail myself to replace Exchange... this was the worst nightmare... for a small company, support is poor... sync does not work all the time...
On the other side, Exchange/Outlook never failed on me... even if hosted, it always worked fine. it may be more expensive, but at least it works fine.
All my computers are Macs (MacBook Pro, Mac Pro.)... but I'm still using Microsoft products (Office 2011) to get the work done correctly...
For now, Microsoft/Office is here to stay...
Never mind verbal contracts, they BROKE THE LAW, that requires them to seek open bids. They had a prototype made up with Microsoft BEFORE even asking for bids, then awarded it to Microsoft.
The bidding process was a COMPLETE SHAM and they don't have to change any process to fix it, THEY NEED TO ABIDE BY THE BIDDING LAW AS THEY ARE REQUIRED TO DO.
That bidding process is there to stop them paying too much for crap technology. This is especially important when you can't afford to borrow any more money. It's there to protect joe tax payer from spendy Feds. If they don't like it they should feel free to hand in their resignation and join the real world.
The government has so many legacy documents in Word. The entire defense industry revolves around Power Point (don't get me started, seriously everything is in Power Point). Asking for Microsoft Office as a requirement is completely legitimate.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
If there is even a single shred of documentation supporting Google in their claim, do the Feds think Google would not be able to find it?
One side is bullshitting. Which one will be shown by the validity of any evidence (or lack thereof) brought forward.
Which is the key phrase in this whole business.
Among other things, it means that if the feds do not change things so only MS Office is acceptable, Google can restart the lawsuit with no problems.
Essentially, this is a peace offering by Google - "we want you to fix the objectionable part of your original RFP, and we'll stop suing you to let you do that in peace. BUT, if you don't fix it, we'll see you in court"
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Tinfoil hat time!
Here's a scary thought, what if Google used its search to hide each and every contradiction to this claim? The Government could say "nuh-uh", but every search online would show they did!
We're not quite there yet, and I know China tries to do this now but in the opposite direction.
The difficulty: 100% compatibility is impossible even in theory. All that Microsoft need do is push a patch that adds or changes some minor feature, and now its competitor is no longer "100% compatible." So a Microsoft troll can always argue the "100% compatible" point, and win it by moving the goalpost. (I don't argue that you are a Microsoft troll, by the way: merely that you are advancing the argument that a Microsoft troll would advance.)
Of course, in the real world, the goalpost does move, because Microsoft is a monopoly and has captured the government. Microsoft products cannot interoperate perfectly even with themselves (ever try to open a 10-year-old document?). Nevertheless, failure to interoperate perfectly with Microsoft products dooms all competition to irrelevancy as "non-mainstream." Any non-Microsoft software, to be successful, has to address a problem for which Microsoft does not have even a bad solution. For instance, software to simulate the operation of a chemical plant might stand or fall on its technical merit. But even that might fail, because it likely has inputs and outputs that are tables of numbers, and therefore will face "100% compatibility" issues with Excel.
Given that no government at this point can intervene without crippling itself - governments run on PowerPoint, and Microsoft has them by the short hairs - I don't see the situation as changing very soon.
In the bad old days when IBM owned a monopoly on the computer business, there were a number of Federal Information Processing Standards that all but stated that procured equipment should have on the nameplate the ninth, second and thirteenth letters of the Latin alphabet as used in US English. They were opened for competitive bidding, and you'd think that only IBM could play. But sometimes it lost a bit because it was undercut by either a used-equipment dealer or even one of its own resellers. In fact, IBM used its resellers to prove to several courts that the bidding process was competitive. It would bid the contract at a non-discounted retail price, sell the equipment to a reseller at wholesale, and let the reseller undercut the price. It turned a tidy profit either way, and was still the sole manufacturer of the equipment. But as long as there was the formality of a competitive bid - which it lost - competing manufacturers had no legal leg to stand on.
Most U.S. government agencies are as head over heals into vertically integrating microsoft solutions as could possibly imagine. Problem is that Microsoft and their zombie government followers (not all are followers but most in IP are) sell office 365 to management as a "cloud" solution when it's obvious that it's just managed exchange with a lightweight web version.
True cloud versions exist ENTIRELY within the browser without binary executables you have to install.
they lost the brief they had saved in Google Docs.
Wait for the changes THEN drop suit. Don't preemptively do so on "promises", especially from the USA.
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to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
They must have settled out of court. :P
Geekism is your _only_ God!