US gov rejects Google's Microsoft complaint
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Pot calls kettle... The US Justice Department has urged state authorities to reject Google's anti-trust claim against Microsoft.â¦
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Microsoft fired back at Google's attempts to have antitrust regulators take a second look at Vista's search capabilities, calling the search giant's claims "baseless."
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Prime Minister-designate Gordon Brown has rejected a call for a new investigation into the government&#39;s handling of the US-led war in Iraq as his government defeated an opposition motion in parliament for an inquiry.
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A federal judge recently denied Google's request for dismissal of American Airlines' suit.
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Microsoft is defending itself against charges by Google that it rigged its new Vista operating system to give its desktop search software an unfair edge over that of its rivals.
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The top antitrust official at the  Justice Department last month backed Microsoft Corp.   by urging state prosecutors to reject a confidential complaint  filed by Google Inc. , The New York Times reported on  Sunday.
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The European Commission's Neelie Kroes told a Dutch newspaper this week that she was pressured by the United States government to go easy on Microsoft. In the article, she criticized government officials for interfering in an EU matter.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft officials deny that theÂ Department of Transportation's recent moratoriumÂ on adoption of Windows Vista is indicative of any widespread reluctance in the government sector to install the new operating system. In a report that was circulated internally within the department by DOT Chief Information Officer Daniel Mintz in late January 2007, that only surfaced publicly on March 5, the IT manager placed an indefinite halt on procurement of the software and any planned desktopÂ upgrades to Vista Among the reasons cited by Mintz in ceasing any deployment of the newest OS from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft were questions about its compatibility with other programs, including earlier versions of Windows, and the estimated costs for moving to Vista. Despite the setback, Microsoft executives claim that Vista adoption is moving forward at a consistent pace in the government sector, and on par with similar installations among private industry. Although aware of the budgetary and scheduling conflicts that often cause the federal government to lag behind businesses in bringing onboard major new platforms, Microsoft contends that the OS is already finding a home in the space. "We're wrapping up the largest early adoption program for the windows OS ever, and over ten percent of our partners were from the federal government," said Patrick Svenburg, Windows client solution specialist with the Microsoft Federal group. "This also represented our largest partnership ever with the federal government; we worked closely with them throughout the entire development cycle to address their concerns and priorities." Svenburg said that Microsoft is planning to host senior officials from the Department of Transportation in Redmond before the end of March to address the concerns the department expects to encounter in moving to the OS. In his memo, Mintz specifically cited "lack of a compelling business case" as his rationale for temporarily banning the move to Vista, along with Microsoft Office 2007 and the Internet Explorer 7 browser. To be fair, Mintz and other DOT officials attributed some of the department's reluctance to upgrade on the agency's planned move to a new Washington headquarters later this year. The DOT technology executive didn't immediately respond to calls seeking further comment on the Vista moratorium. Microsoft representatives said that like many of its largest, Enterprise Agreement-level customers, government organizations such as the Transportation Department will need to avail themselves of the software maker's compatibility and deployment automation programs to help overcome some of the perceived challenges with Vista deployment. Some industry watchers believe, however, Â that it may still be hard for many federal agencies to make a sufficient business case for spending the time and money needed to move to the platform. Specifically, most of the major departments have invested heavily in moving their critical applications to Web-based systems, which could serve to dampen enthusiasm and demand for migration to the new OS and productivity suite, said Shawn McCarthy, a government IT analyst with IDC, based in Framingham, Mass. "A lot of government sites have been trying to migrate more applications to Web interfaces that any desktop system can access, and that's taken pressure off the organizations on the client side," McCarthy said. "The individual agencies are under a lot of pressure to make a business case anytime they want to do systems upgrades; if they can't really justify with benefit that will be seen, the upgrade either doesn't happen or migration is slower." The analyst said that despite Microsoft's claims that features such as improved security will convince government CIOs to get behind adoption of Vista, federal decision-makers will take a wait-and-see attitude toward the product and hold-off on moving over until the operating system's advantages are proven by others. Other experts said that it's too early to pass judgment on government or private-sector adoption of Vista since large organizations don't typically move to new technologies quickly. Michael Cherry, analyst with independent research firm Directions On Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Wash., said that the Transportation Department and other agencies will likely move to Vista incrementally over time. Organizations will also need to spend valuable time and money doing extensive evaluations of the OS before any installation begins, which could push back adoption further, he said. "When I read the [DOT] memo, I heard an IT department asking its people to refrain from buying ad hoc Vista licenses and machines, because they can't support that yet," said Cherry. "Something else to consider is that IT people have a lot of projects that they're already working and limited resources; Vista is not the kind of thing that merits dropping everything else to move on it quickly." Cherry said that he does believe federal agencies will begin adopting the OS at the same rate that they retire older desktop systems, although he noted that IT departments will likely give more consideration than ever before to alternatives including open source and Apple products. The first types of government users the analyst believes are likely to install Vista for functional reasons will be employees who carry sensitive data on their laptops, or view such information remotely on their PCs, he said. Those users will be seeking the onboard protection offered by the BitLocker encryption feature of Vista, according to the expert. In general he believes it's too soon for anyone to worry about adoption of the new OS. "It's way too soon to be taking individual cases or data points and trying to make a trend of them," Cherry said. "Vista might be good, but it's not so good people are going to dump their existing machines overnight just to get it."
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Search giant's CEO didn't address Googe's role, but says the Net boosts government transparency.
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The Bush administration said it will deny Californiaâs bid to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than federal law required.
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The United States on Wednesday rejected the announced results of Ukraineâs disputed presidential election and warned the government of the former Soviet republic to uphold
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US President George W. Bush's administration rejected a call by US lawmakers to take China to the World Trade Organization for &quot;currency manipulation.&quot;
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Redmond responds to Google's alliance with Capgemini by suggesting that Google Apps is not appropriate for many businesses.
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In what could be the company's only option for prolonging its complaint about Microsoft's deployment of its Windows Desktop Search component in Windows Vista, Google - which many believed had actually won a concession from Microsoft last week - has filed an amicus brief with the US district court overseeing Microsoft's compliance in its antitrust settlement with the US Justice Dept.
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IN A preliminary ruling, the US government has rejected Microsoft&#39;s 1996 patent on technology for saving files on computers using easy-to-remember names.
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The Bush administration on Friday rejected a request from 30 members of Congress that it bring a World Trade Organization case against China charging the Asian nation with manipulating its currency to gain unfair trade advantages against the United States.
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Microsoft Corp. is denying that its CEO Steve Ballmer told Asian government leaders on Thursday that Microsoft believes that Linux violates more than 200 software patents.