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Google Calls For More Limits On Microsoft
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jun 25, 2007 08:47 PM
from the keeping-watch-a-while-longer dept.
from the keeping-watch-a-while-longer dept.
teh_commodore writes "Scientific American is reporting that Google is now asking a Federal judge to extend the government's anti-trust oversight of Microsoft, specifically with regard to desktop search software. Microsoft had already agreed to modify Vista to allow rival desktop search engines, but Google says that this remedy will come too late — specifically, after (most of) the anti-trust agreement expires in November. What makes this political maneuver interesting is that Google went over the heads of the Department of Justice and US state regulators, who had found Microsoft's compromise acceptable, to appeal directly to the Federal judge overseeing the anti-trust settlement." Update: 06/26 17:20 GMT by KD : The judge is unwilling to play along with Google; she said she will likely defer to an agreement on desktop search forged between Microsoft and the plaintiffs in the case: i.e. Justice and the states.
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Politics: Justice Dept. Defends Microsoft Against Google 329 comments
Frosty Piss writes "The Seattle PI reports that Google has complained to US antitrust officials about the hard-drive searching tool built into Windows Vista, saying that it stymies Google's similar search program. The complaint, lodged late last year, was revealed Saturday by The New York Times in a story about the Bush administration's handling of Microsoft antitrust issues. The real story, though, is not the Google complaint itself, but how the Justice Department is failing to enforce the Microsoft anti-trust decree. According to the story, Thomas Barnett, the assistant U.S. attorney general in charge of antitrust issues, sent a memo last month to state attorneys general across the nation, seeking to persuade them to reject Google's complaint."
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IT: Microsoft To Change Desktop Search After Google Complaint 286 comments
Raver32 writes to tell us that Microsoft will be making changes to their desktop search tool in Vista after a 49-page antitrust complaint was filed by Google. "Microsoft initially dismissed the allegations, saying regulators had reviewed the program before Vista launched. However, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in an interview last week that the company was willing to make changes if necessary."
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Google huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then tell us how MS is keeping Google out of desktop search business. From what I see, it is MS that's providing platform for Google apps to work on. Have you actually read what Google is arguing about? It's ridiculous! They complain that it's too hard to shut down indexing service. I've written several services and programs that control other services. There's nothing magical in it, just tell Service Manager to stop that particular service and it will stop it if you have sufficient rights (user can't stop system services, UAC to the rescue). Google is complaining that end-users don't know how to do it but fails to mention that Google's installer app, which is used to install Google search, can pretty well do it. Google is whihing that OEMs don't know how to do it. Oh gimme a break.
Everyone's yelling about monopolies and stuff but nobody's actually focusing on the subject at hand.
Re:Google huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Naturally, Microsoft responded to Netscape not only bundling its browser into the operating system ("free" for anyone who bought a Windows PC), but making it architecturally part of the operating system so that Steve Ballmer could tell a judge that he didn't know how to remove IE without completely breaking Windows. It was the default browser for most PC's sold.
And that's just one competitor, one story that was essentially repeated several dozen times throughout Microsoft's history.
BTW I'm not suggesting that Google will be any better, or that they shouldn't be watched like a hawk. Chances are they won't be, and they should be.
Re:Google huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that Explorer.exe can't use HTML? Or that if it does the html component can only be used in Explorer? Or that Windows can include MSHTML.DLL but not Iexplorer.exe? Incidentally as far as I can tell third party applications literally embed Internet Explorer, not MSHTML.exe, which is why it's so hard to remove it. It's not like the edit control where third party applications depend on the EDIT class, not the whole of Notepad.
If Office were provided for free then Wordperfect would have had a right to bitch. Notepad is a thoroughly simplistic tool.
What about Wordpad and the RichEdit control? Is that near enough to Wordperfect's functionality that Microsoft should have been prevented from bundling it? What if they'd gradually added features until it looked like Wordperfect - should that be illegal?
And how about multimedia codecs? Should be illegal for Microsoft to specify an API for codecs? What about if they bundle a toy application that demonstrates how to use the API? What about if they include MediaPlayer which started off as a toy application and got gradually enhanced. Ironically I actually use MediaPlayer Classic which removed all the enhancements and reverts it to a toy application that just knows how to host codecs.
As far as I know in the EU Microsoft have been forced to provide a very of Windows where the MediaPlayer executable is not bundled but presumably the API is supported and Microsoft codecs are supported, because RealNetworks demanded it.
Incidentally, if anti trust law forces them to do this, is ok for them to provide Media Player as a free download? What happens if there is an icon in the start menu and it installs on demand when people try to use it? Is that ok too?. How user unfriendly do they have to make it to use the Microsoft application in your opinion?
Seems like it's not as clear cut as you think doesn't it?
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than being an Operating System company, Microsoft is a software company that uses their dominance in Operating Systems to leverage dominance in other software markets. These budding monopolies feed back into the Operating system monopoly, it's called vendor lock-in [wikipedia.org]. Essentially, user-friendliness does not enter the equation, much of the Windows API simply should not be there in the first place.
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Re:Google huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, fuck google. Damn the collateral damage, examples must be made. I don't see Google opening up page rank and exposing ever aspect of their technology through their API, and they have a monopoly on web searching. I'm going down to Home Depot, I find myself short kerosene and a pitchfork.
Google is *not* a search engine company (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I just don't see the comparison. Size isn't the issue. Google doesn't have a network monopoly, which is the big difference between Microsoft and Google. If I want to stop using Google tomorrow, I can switch to a competitor without any downsides -- other than the competitor might not be as good. (example: gmail lets me forward my mail to a new account, use a non-gmail address, etc....they seem to go out of their way to NOT lock me in. That's a HUGE difference from the way Microsoft has always done business)
Double standards & patent issues (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
the only way they can do that is to make the best product. they can't threaten suppliers with higher OS prices like MS did if they tried to sell OS/2. they can't write in subtle incompatabilities to prevent uptake of standards.
if google started whacking great big annoying ads in gmail and search, i'd just move to another provider in the blink of an eye. no money lost, no inconvienence.
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Google is the scariest company out there, right now - beyond MS
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There's a difference between power and abuse. Google is scary, but Microsoft has already got a toe hold in equally as much info as Google, for fucks sake it's written out in your EULA, M$ claimed that shit long ago.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xm [infoworld.com]Re:Google huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Second Google has a lot going for it, they aren't "Evil" but they do cross the line at times. But the real question is are they a company or are they a humanitarian effort. Once you realize they are a company, also realize that they aren't crossing the line to limit people. They aren't trying to make a monopoly here. Hell they BOUGHT Youtube, knowing that with in 6 months they'd be in a law suit with the RIAA. If anything we should applaud them just for that.
But let's look at it this way. From what it looks like Microsoft is far worse than Google. That being said, Google left unchecked might not be the best thing but it could also be a good thing, and personally I'd take that option. We can assume Google is evil overlord number 2 but Google isn't looking that way. They look like a good company who while providing overly useful tools are also trying to turn a profit.
That is key however. They are a company. They want to make money. They do this at the same time as they benefit us. You'll never get something for nothing, but what Google has offered seems to be a fair trade. They do encroach a little on privacy issues. But let's also cut them a little slack. They don't hide this fact, and they don't force you to use their system. I'm willing to take a slight privacy hit if it generates advertising revenue for them. They're offering me a gig of space for Email, a fully functional search engine (no matter how I want to search) as well other features, personally I don't have anything to hide from Google. Go figure, I guess I haven't read 1984 as many times as some of the people here or perhaps I can think for myself rather than listen to what Orwell has to say.
We can't expect companies to run in a vacuum, we can't expect them not to make a profit especially when they give us the quality of service Google has, if you expect that then all you'll ever see is Evil Overlords. But at the same time if we don't attempt to replace Microsoft we'll always be stuck with Window's and while XP looked like a good step, Vista is just about as evil as you get. Personally I'd rather work with the company who's willing to fight against the RIAA versus the one who made a huge deal with them, and screwed their consumers to get a few more bullet points and probably some cash money deal under the table.
Trading Google for Microsoft sounds like a win win, and even if it turns around at worse this case will only make laws that allow more competition not less, so if that's not a win for the people, I really have no idea.
Re:Google huh... (Score:5, Funny)
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Worst case is that they will still be slightly better. How are they going to be anti-competitive? How are they going to force restrictive EULA's down our throats?
The most obvious way is by prioritising (or deprioritising) search results for your company'
You go Google (Score:5, Insightful)
The world is better with the dominant operating system open for competition. A court understood this once ( http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm [usdoj.gov] ), but clearly the DOJ is not going to enforce it without Google (and others with the wherewithal to do so) being vocal about it.
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Fixed. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Welcome to our new corporate overlords, same as the old ones.
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Re The first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Put another way, they traffic in information. An OS is, when you get right down to it, nothing but information, and there are alternatives to Windows. What will happen when/if there becomes no alternative to Google for web searches?
Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
But it brings into focus a new corporate strategy... the use of regulation over competition. Asking for regulation is against the traditional American business philosophy, which typically favours deregulation.
This could play out in favour of Microsoft who will likely ask that Google get regulated more heavily, which will result in some interesting news for the world, to come. And yes, I know something you don't.
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
Typically, yes, but not in the case of abusive monopolies. Most systems need regulators (human or mechanical) to avoid positive feedback loops.
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google pushes competitors around too (Score:5, Insightful)
As an example can mapquest come along and demand that when a user searches for a street in google that their map be displayed prominantly as the first search item instead of google maps? This has a huge impact in the online maps business. Google has used a dominant product to gain a massive advantage in a new area. Not entirely unlike what the boys from Redmond like to do. Im not saying its evil, but it does seem kind of like a bully who starts crying when a bigger bully comes along.
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This has a huge effect on the on-line map business.
Are you saying that you like mapquest better? Or that google offers a inferior product? Because when I go to 'google' to seach for 'maps' Im pretty well expecting to get google maps! If I wanted mapque
Re:Google pushes competitors around too (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it isn't about the "quality" of existing products. If I write a new online map program integrated with satelite video, that shows you in 3d how to navigate to your destination, and then has a really nice map you can print out, and it works on a mobile phone, and it has an excellent fuzzy logic engine which can decipher any address you enter. Say I create this end all be all of map products. How is anyone going to find it? Google maps will always appear above my superior map program no matter how many people link to it, or how many people use it, I will always be "second" at best.
Google is the great gatekeeper of the internet. If Google doesn't like you, you are out of business in the online world. That is the problem the parent is talking about.
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And its not necessarily about "today" that worries me, or most people about google. It is in the fu
It all depends what "evil" is. (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears to me that Google is really stretching the definition of its "don't be evil" mission by playing the "pull" card and trying to get an already over-reaching government to bitchslap Microsoft on their behalf. Ayn Rand, call your office.
Google, if you've given up on trying to make it on your ability and have decided instead to play the looter's game, please issue a press release to that effect so that I can be properly and officially disappointed in you, and switch my IE and Mozilla over to MS Live search just for spite.
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Isn't it the DOJ's job to monitor M
Which part of the consent decree? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a little out of the loop, but I just read through the final [amended] consent decree against Microsoft on the DOJ website. Can someone in the know point out what clause Google is claiming is being violated? I haven't seen it directly mentioned in any story posted yet.
I mean, the main problems addressed in the consent decree were twofold: 1) Microsoft was illegally leveraging OEMs for positioning, and 2) Microsoft was illegally leveraging it's "Middleware" market by including standalone products (such as Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, etc) in its Windows OS.
What's Google's ground, legally, for their complaint? According to the consent decree, the term "Middleware" was defined, basically, as either "IE, Java, Media Player, Messenger, Outlook Express" or "browsers, email clients, networked audio/video software, instant messaging software" or "any functionality provided by Microsoft software that is distributed separately within a year preceding a new commercial Windows release which is similar to a non-Microsoft middleware product".
That being the case, did Microsoft ever release the Instant Search option as a separate download from any Windows OS? I can't think of any time they ever did that to my recollection. In fact, as someone else pointed out, searching is not only integral to the file systems of an OS, but it's been included in Windows from quite a ways back (if not as efficiently as it currently is implemented in Vista.)
Just curious....
LondovirJust consider this (Score:3, Insightful)
And in this light, the fact Google is never happy, they're just maximizing their luck with the entire "Microsoft locked Windows down" inertia.
I just see how many of your are trying to read into this "if Google does it, then it's the right thing for everyone". No, you idiots. It's the right thing for Google. It's completely irrelevant if it's the right thing for everyone.
I'm evil and curious (Score:4, Insightful)
First, let me say that I'm evil. I'm a corporate code tool for Microsoft, because they pay me money to play with lots and lots of their servers. Flame away, I've heard it all before.
I always find the reaction to stories like this one interesting... I know all about what my camp thinks and how we see these issues. I wasn't present for the netscape/IE thing, and during school I was a pretty serious linux user for four or five years (as a freshman, the ability to play half life was more important). I use Firefox because IE7 still sucks. Google search was my home page for a long time, and frankly their search still does a great job... it's not what I use every day, but it is where I go when Live is being slow or I want to get a different view of the same search.
For me, if I go out and pay an arm and a leg for Vista (don't like the pricing, but they don't ask me about these things), it should be great out of the box, and it should have all the basics (a browser to get online, a file system I can use to store and browse, the ability to play a CD, etc). I'm not paying for a skeleton system that's only done enough to let me DIY the rest... when it's finished installing, I should be able to reasonably use my computer right away. It's like buying a new car... I should be able to drive it off the lot, not need to go buy tires that aren't included (because I might develop a bias towards those tires?). For the average users out there (ahem, my computer hating mom), who want their computer for every day, uncomplicated tasks, it's even more important that it just works.
So in a nutshell, I guess what I see day to day is that if there are features a user will reasonably expect out of the product, and we have time and budget, shouldn't we build them in? It seems more evil to me to leave them out.
MS does have to play by difference rules, of course, because we're all evil, money hording devil worshipers who eat babies (delicious with a nice cayenne hot sauce), etc, etc. But I'm really curious for you on the outside world, do you design your products with defenses against users becoming biased toward them? Or were you us, and it's your product that people say is unfair, how would you balance "justice" with usability? Especially for something as basic-functionality as searching a file system? If it becomes jammed with ad-supported semi-functional competing products (by which I mean parties other than, and less scrupulous and skilled than Google), because competitors need the right to install random crazy software that will run under the name of your-product-name-here, did you make a good choice?
Re:I'm evil and curious (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument here isn't over whether MS should be able to bundle stuff with their OS (though unfortunately that's what some of the anti-trust stuff has focussed on) - it's whether MS should be allowed to exploit a leading position in one market (OS) to crush competition in other markets (desktop search in this instance). Of course MS should be able to bundle IE (for example) - should they be able to attempt to kill any other browser company though? Should they be allowed to attempt to kill the internet as a multi-platform endeavour (this is the end-game of Silverlight, and was the long-term purpose of IE (including IE Mac) )?
Are you familiar with the expressions "cut off the oxygen supply (of Netscape)", "a vig on every transaction (on the internet)", and "I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to kill Google"? The story of Java on Windows? BeOS? OS2? DR-DOS?
While you flippantly use the term evil to describe MS, their focus on 'winning' (where winning means dominating and owning any market entered) at all costs does lead to evil. Their flagrant and illegal abuse of the market position of Windows in the past does mean they're held to stricter standards, as it should. In my opinion MS should be allowed to build whatever they like into their products, but they should be closely scrutinised for illegal actions, like breaking rival software, bribery, breaking contracts, buying out competition in nascent markets, bullying suppliers and customers, attempting to strongarm OEM PC makers with secret contracts, attempting to crush (not beat fairly but crush) rival tech like Java, the web and Google Desktop search by breaking OS compatibility, coming out with Windows extensions to break other implementations (Java) etc etc. With all these actions, MS has set back the computing world years.
If I were you, I'd actually try to win on merits, not by manipulation and extinguishing competitors. While Microsoft employees don't even understand why people mistrust their company (which you patently don't), the attitude of those in the 'outside world', as you charmingly put it, won't change.
YRO? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ahhh, now you know why it sucks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are they bothering trying to change the wreckage that is Vista, instead of releasing their own OS? Frankly at this rate I'm surprised GoogleOS hasn't already been announced.
They had better. The consent decree expires in November. If that means wh
Re:Ahhh, now you know why it sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do no Evil...By Any Means Neccesary (Score:4, Interesting)
So is using your large companies power for the greater good doing (or being) evil?
I don't really think so...
Re:Do no Evil...By Any Means Neccesary (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's to it.
IMHO, the ends don't always justify the means. I lost a lot of respect for Novell, and for Xandros, when they made deals with Microsoft. I feel that, no matter what good could be gained from it, that these things upheld the philosophical underpinnings of the OSS community. Even if GPLv3 gets twisted in such a way that MS gets bent over a barrel and has to release their code, that won't be good. It will have been sneaky and underhanded, and we would be just as bad as them.
In much the same way, if Google resorts to the same power-brokering that Microsoft does, they will be doing evil. Doing evil is what makes one be evil. (Sorry for getting it wrong earlier, btw)
This could quickly become a PR nightmare for Google if they get painted in the wrong light, and for something that I see as trivial. Google is one of those companies, like Apple, where looking cool is important to their image, and their market base. Why risk it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For proof, just google "Don't be evil" and "I read it on the internet so it must be true".
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm [wikipedia.org]
"Flamebait"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Flamebait"? (Score:4, Informative)