“Google issued this statement [yesterday] from its chief legal officer, David Drummond, after Microsoft and antitrust regulators announced an agreement to make changes to Windows Vista in response to Google’s concerns about the Microsoft operating system’s built-in desktop search tool,” Todd Bishop reports for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Microsoft’s current approach to Vista desktop search clearly violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice. We are pleased that as a result of Google’s request that the consent decree be enforced, the Department of Justice and state Attorneys General have required Microsoft to make changes to Vista. These remedies are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers.
Bishop reports, “Asked for more details about what the company would like to see, a Google spokesman said Microsoft should give users a choice of desktop search engines from all search access points on the desktop, and make it easier to disable Windows Vista’s desktop search index.”
Full article here.
Wait… I don’t understand how Vista’s desktop search is substantially different from Spotlight.
The main difference in this case is Spotlight doesn’t search the web. Vista’s desktop search does (or can) using MS Live or whatever it’s called.
The other difference has to do with OS market share. With Windows being the dominant OS, this drives a significantly larger amount of traffic to MS’s own search sites and gives them the opportunity to dramatically increase their ad-revenue via those sites; while simultaneously decreasing the potential revenue for other search sites, including Google.
Not to argue with your point, but Spotlight will search the web with a handy plug-in called Google Importer:
http://www.caffeinatedcocoa.com/
This is wrong. Microsoft should be allowed to make their product how ever they want. Software companies do not have the right to make products for the OS. They simply do not. If people CHOOSE to buy a product that is not compatible with another product then that is the consumers CHOICE. Microsoft should not have to make their products compatible with anyone else product. Period. I do not like Vista, I didn’t chose to run it, I love Mac’s, and I love Apple. So do not get me wrong. But just wait until companies start to impose this kind of stuff on Apple. They will argue that Apple bundles Safari with Mac OS X and iTunes, and that it is not allowing for competition. I say well too bad to the competition, go developer an operating system and get people to buy it and bundle your software with it. No matter what anyone says they are “features” they are selling points for the operating system, and they are what the developer choses, the bottom line is consumers DO NOT HAVE TO BUY IT if they don’t want to, and lack of knowledge of the product they are buying is not an excuse to not include something as to allow for other “competition” the fact is, if you buy it you get what you get. Period.
“AlterVista?”
What are they, from LongIsland?
DogGone:
The reason they “perform slowly” when both are running is that you have two separate engines trying to index files independently. It slows down the computer as a whole. This is nothing specific to MS and Google Desktop Search. The same slowdown would occur when running Spotlight and GDS (or any two programs, for that matter) simultaneously.
DJ Rizzo:
You’re incorrect. The difference has nothing to do with internet search. Google is arguing that desktop search should be defined as “middleware”. Middleware are programs that aren’t specific to the OS but are often included in the OS (like internet browsers, media players, email programs, etc…). Google is arguing that, since desktop search is middleware, MS must open their OS to any other middleware program, like Google Desktop Search, and allow the user to change the default middleware provider. There are lots of these types of suits that take place not because MS was convicted of monopolistic practices, but because of threats that they will be sued again. There are other examples of the same type of lawsuit. During the development of Vista, MS was forced to allow software from antivirus companies (like Symantec and McAfee) the ability change the Vista kernal!!! In fact, MS was forced by the EU to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player for the same reason. Can you imaging Apple being forced to sell OSX without iLife?
To all:
Just be careful when you wish for MS’s demise and the ascention OSX as the dominant OS. I don’t want Google screwing around with Spotlight or Symantec and McAfee altering my OSX kernal or the EU getting rid of iLife!!
“Microsoft should be allowed to make their product how ever they want.”
Not according to the laws of the U.S. Where were you April 3rd, 2000?
Monopolies convicted of abusive, anti-competitive practices must adhere to the ruling of law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
Read the part about prohibited conduct:
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f200400/200457.htm
Monopolistic practises harm not only the consumer and their (better) competitors, but they harm the entire economy. If you have say 4 companies running the whole country (as has happened in the past in some countries) there are no market economics principles at work for efficient resource allocation and the whole economy goes down the tubes, while the monopolist makes heaps of money.
Is that whole some of you people want, when you say monopolists should be able to do whatever they want?
PLUS, Apple and Google get on fine. Apple has done nothing to sabotage Google search on the Mac, it works just fine!
On Mac OS X having iLife, Spotlight, iTunes, Safari, etc in absolutely no means it undermines or reduces customer option of installing ANYTHING else and use that instead. Mac OS X does not start to react badly, bitching customers every time they run another browser whether they do want INSTEAD to revert to Safari as default (you may even delete Safari from your system if you wish to do so). That is, the environment is such that competitors CAN thrive on OS X and playing a LEVEL FIELD on the OS so that the user can CHOOSE without external influence but the quality of the products, Apple’s own or competitors.
On Windows this DOES NOT HAPPEN. Competitors products performance, quality, interaction with the OS are undermined so that competitors are not playing on a level field with corresponding Microsoft products so that the user is actually presented with an inferior experience on competitors products that is only there BECAUSE OF MICROSOFT MONOPOLISTIC PRACTICES.
Capish?
The issue is not with having *ANYTHING-YOU-LIKE* bundled with the OS, or coming with it. The issue arises when the *ANYTHING-YOU-LIKE* that comes with the OS, bundled or pre-installed, undermine or interfere negatively with the quality or user experience of a corresponding competitor products, hence illegal monopolistic practice.
So all above saying “Ahhhh, it will then happen with Apple *your-favorite-sw-title-here as well” simply are clueless about what the real issue is about.
So yes, Google is right.
Not only was MS found to have a monopoly, it was (long ago) found to have engaged in illegal tactics to GET that monopoly. People forget that before Windows there was DOS. DOS did little enough that other companies made alternates that were compatible (notably Digital Research with DR-DOS)–and probably superior.
But MS licensing terms for computer manufacturers required them to pay a license fee for every box whether it included MS-DOS or not. That froze DR out of the OEM market, solidified MS’ monopoly.
The rules ARE different for MS both because of their monopoly power but ALSO for how they got it. They have settled these cases with consent decrees where they agree not to do certain things in the future.
The equivalent, btw, might be if apple required all music on the iTunes store to be EXCLUSIVE to iTunes. (Note “required”… not to be confused with a promotional exclusive that doesn’t preculde a different promotional exclusive on another service.)
Anyway it is not just MS’ market position that makes the rules different–it’s past behavior, and how they’ve settled those cases.