Microsoft antitrust flares over Google indexing claim

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 12 June 2007 03:00

IT Policy - Regulation

The consent decree that settled the US government's antitrust suit against Microsoft is back in the news with a complaint from Google that Vista limits consumer choice of desktop search software.

It's not that tools like Google Search don't work with Vista, rather that the search giant claims there is no practical way to run off Vista's own indexing function. Having two lots of indexing running in parallel has an adverse impact on overall performance. 4sysops notes that Vista's indexing service can be disabled completely.

The problem is that the search functions of various parts of Vista rely on those indexes. That's not really surprising, and parallels can be found elsewhere. For instance, Apple's Mac OS X and some of its accompanying applications do much the same with the Spotlight search feature. What Google seems to be complaining about is that there's no provision for a user to swap out Vista's search and indexing in favour of one provided by a third party.

The original case centred on browsers, and Microsoft eventually implemented a system that allows the user to set a default browser other than Internet Explorer. But it is not feasible to remove Internet Explorer from a system, because various functions and applications bypass this setting and open Internet Explorer when a browser is needed.

An interesting aspect to Google's complaint is that the federal Justice Department is discouraging various state attorneys general from taking action. The New York Times reports that the request came from assistant attorney general Thomas Barnett, formerly "a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust matters."

The Times goes on to note that Barnett had not worked on Microsoft matters while at that firm, and that after joining the Justice Department had kept out of the Microsoft case for over a year until ethics lawyers decided there was no conflict of interest.

The Department's action might not have the desired effect, instead firming the resolve of state officials to investigate Google's claim.

"We are at a turning point in deciding how to go forward in assessing whether Microsoft is willing to modify Windows Vista to make it accessible to competing software," a Bloomberg story quotes Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

It is possible that the matter will also be discussed at judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's next court hearing concerning the consent decree, which is scheduled for June 26.