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Google Apps Beats Office 365 For US Dept. of the Interior Contract
angry tapir writes "The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google's services over Microsoft's Office 365. Google had sued the U.S. agency in 2010, claiming its requirements for the contract tilted the scales unfairly toward Microsoft. Google eventually dropped its lawsuit last September."
i can't wait to see what the MS shills have to say about this :)
This shouldn't come as any surprise, since Google didn't have an outage due to a "leap year glitch". Any wonder why they skipped over Office?
What is the matter with these people? Anybody can load Libre Office, for free and legally, then use the thing for the rest of their lives without paying a cent. It is good old traditional office software, easily used by anybody familiar with any other office suite. No internet connection is necessary for normal use. There are no glaring security holes. How can these dopey bureaucrats pass up a deal like that?
And it's not even the first time MS has made that mistake. They did in with the Zune in 2008, then made the same mistake with Azure.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Err this is for web based stuff so no even with Microsoft they can update at a whim.
Not sure what your yammering about TOC's is about. The feature is still right there: http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106342
You are right: there are no essential features lacked by Open or Libre Office. By essential, I mean stuff needed to present information. Therefore, Government departments could easily mandate that only that feature set is used. But the Microsoft argument is that if "free" means it only does 99% of what expensive does, free is worthless (even if the 1% is unnecessary.)
Take presentations. Almost all presentations would be precisely as meaningful if the slides were done in Wordpad with additional images. But, like medieval scribes, Microsoft has persuaded people that unless every page is an illuminated manuscript, the content is worthless. The arms race in manuscript production continued right up until Gutenberg, when people suddenly realised that movable type was easier to read. I await the day when some unknown 5-star general suddenly realises that Powerpoint is a waste of resources, though I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
DOI's original RFQ specified that only Microsoft solutions would be considered
Only after Google sued them (and then dropped the lawsuit) that DOI agreed to drop the "M$ only" clause
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Geez. You'd think that one guy at Microsoft who writes all the software would have remembered last time he made that error and not duplicated it.
For the record, I have participated on the MS team that bids government contracts. Not recently but many many years ago, when the climate was reversed.
MS: "We would like to bid on this project" govt: "No you cant, it must be SUN" or "no you must be ???" I can't even remember what the it was called, that is how truly relative it was, not relative then, forgotten about now. oh yeah, POSIX. Anyone even remember it?
So anyhow, despite objections for years MS became the standard anyway for quite a while.
If you can blame it on sleazy marketing then, why can't you blame the present shift on the same thing? The fact is he who does the best/most lobbying wins.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.