Google: Vista search changes fall short
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Blog: Microsoft's proposed changes to search functions in Windows Vista, per a pact last week with regulators, don't go far enough to promote "user choice," search giant tells antitrust judge in new filing.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will change how desktop search works in its Vista operating system by the end of the year, in response to an antitrust complaint by rival Google Inc., the company said in court documents released late Tuesday. Microsoft has agreed to make changes that would allow end users and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to select a default desktop search program in Vista that's not Windows Instant Search, according to a status report in the ongoing court review of Microsoft's 2002 antitrust settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The change will come in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, due out in beta form by the end of 2007. "Microsoft believes that Google's complaint is without merit," Microsoft's lawyers wrote in the status report, filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "Nevertheless, Microsoft worked with the Plaintiffs in a spirit of cooperation to resolve any issues the complaint may raise." Google, in a statement, said the search changes are welcome, but more needs to be done. "Microsoft's current approach to Vista desktop search clearly violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice," David Drummond, Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer, said in the statement. "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." Earlier this month, Google confirmed that it had complained to the DOJ about Vista's desktop search functionality. Google had complained that it was difficult to replace Vista's search with products from Google or other competitors. In the 2002 settlement, Microsoft agreed to allow competing middleware vendors to easily replace Microsoft software with their own in Windows operating systems. As part of the desktop search agreement, software vendors will be able to register their products as alternatives for the Vista search. The default search selected by the computer user or OEM will launch whenever Vista launches a search result window, and the default search will have space in Vista's start menu. Microsoft will also tell software vendors and OEMs that the desktop search index in Vista is designed to run in the background and "cede precedence over computing resources to any other software product, including third-party search products," the DOJ said in its portion of the status report. "Microsoft will emphasize that there is no technical reason why OEMs and end users cannot, if they choose to, install additional desktop search products on their systems." Microsoft will also provide technical information to allow other desktop search providers to design their products to optimize computer resources, the DOJ said. The plaintiffs in the case, including 17 states that sued Microsoft for antitrust, are "collectively satisfied that this agreement will resolve any issues" in the Google complaint, the DOJ said. Elsewhere in the status report, the DOJ said a technical committee overseeing Microsoft's compliance has hired two consulting firms to check Microsoft's procedures for identifying communications protocols that it is required to disclose to independent software vendors who want to make their products interoperable with Microsoft's. In March, Microsoft and the plaintiffs reached an agreement to address concerns over the belated discovery of protocols that plaintiffs believed needed to be disclosed. The technical committee will extend a royalty-free program for software vendors to receive the protocols, the DOJ said. The royalty-free program will continue 18 months after the date the committee decides the protocol documentation is substantially complete, and the technical committee can extend the program if it believe Microsoft isn't making progress on the documentation, the DOJ said. But Microsoft is on schedule with a plan to fix technical documentation used by other software vendors, the DOJ said. Errors in the technical documentation have prompted repeated complaints from the antitrust plaintiffs in recent months, but the DOJ said Microsoft has been able "to keep up with the flow of new technical documentation issues."
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Bowing to pressure from Google and antitrust regulators, Microsoft will alter Windows Vista so users can pick a non-Microsoft program to search their hard drives.
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TechWeb - The rise of Google, Yahoo and specialized search providers has radically altered our perception of information access, yet enterprise search implementations haven't kept up with the transformation in the consumer world. Plenty of vendors are developing breakthroughs, but the missing player has been Microsoft, and many believe progress in enterprise search is being held hostage by long and unwieldy upgrade cycles for systems including Windows, Office and SharePoint. Look beyond quick fixes and bring search into your strategic information management strategy.
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In agreeing to make what could be described technically as a minor change to the way it handles its options for consumer desktop search, Microsoft last night may have made its most symbolically significant statement to date with regard to its current stance in the technology market: It backed down, in response to a complaint from Google that its placement of desktop search capabilities within Windows Vista constituted a breach of its antitrust settlement agreement with the US and states' governments regarding middleware.
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Microsoft's unveils improved Live Search but we've seen most of it before.
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Looks like Microsoft may have been biding its time to get back at search giant Google. [Missing Links]
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Search site Ask revamps its results pages to set it apart from rivals such as Google and Microsoft.
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Microsoft Corp.  has agreed to modify its Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint that its computer search function put Google Inc.  and other potential rivals at a disadvantage, the Justice Department and Microsoft said on Tuesday.
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Google Desktop Search is an amazing little tool. It allows you to search your computer more quickly, completely and intuitively than Windows&#39; search feature.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft released documents on Wednesday that detail changes it will make to its desktop search and indexing feature in Windows Vista that will be included as part of the Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) update. The changes are a response toÂ charges from rival Google that Microsoft built the feature in such a way that it slowed down competitive offerings from rivals. Microsoft agreed to make the changes as part of its ongoing antitrust proceedings with U.S. and state officials, and they were detailed as part of a status report filed in the case in June. To provide more information to the general public, the company posted documents online Wednesday that detail how third parties can help modify desktop search applications to work with the changes being made in SP1. Microsoft has said it will release SP1, a roll-up of updates to the Vista OS, in the first quarter of 2008. Microsoft said it made the changes so that a customer who uses a third-party desktop search product instead of Vista's built-in feature can have "easy and direct access" to those offerings through the Windows user interface. "That means that in addition to the numerous ways a user could access a third-party search solution in Windows Vista, they can now get to their preferred search results from additional entry points in the Start Menu and Explorer Windows in Windows Vista SP1," the company said. These features were at the heart of Google's claims, which appeared in a white paper to U.S. and state antitrust officials in April. Google said the desktop search feature in Vista discouraged users from installing third-party products because Vista's search boxes and bars -- available in several places in the OS, including the Start menu and in the Windows Explorer file manager -- work only with Microsoft's search and indexing tool. The company also said it is nearly impossible to turn off Vista's indexing, which means a competitor must add a second indexer that slows down a PC. To let their products use Vista options they don't have access to now, third-party vendors can register their search applications using the new search protocol in Windows Vista SP1, which is detailed online. An article explaining the search changes can be found in Microsoft's Knowledge Base.
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Until recently, it was difficult to find news archives on the web more than 30 days old. That's changed in a big way with the advent of Google's News Archive search.
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Microsoft  has agreed to modify its new Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint that its desktop search function put Google  and other potential competitors at a disadvantage, the Justice Department and Microsoft said on Tuesday.
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Documents released today detail changes Microsoft will make to its desktop search and indexing feature in Windows Vista.
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(InfoWorld) - Google's claims thatÂ Microsoft's built-in Vista desktop indexing and search tool violates its antitrust agreementÂ could be difficult to prove even if the software does slow down the performance of Google's competitive Google Desktop offering. As long as a user can run alternative software to Microsoft's Instant Search software, it's unlikely that U.S. federal antitrust officials would consider coming down on the software giant, analysts and users said. Google's claims are far different than the ones posed by Netscape during the browser wars that led to the Department of Justice's antitrust suit in the 1990s, said Rob Helm, research director at Directions on Microsoft. "Microsoft beat Netscape in part by leveraging its relationship with PC manufacturers," he said. "This is a lot subtler." Google seems to be alleging that "if two pieces of software don't play together, then it must be an anticompetitive tactic of Microsoft's," Helm said. "I don't recall any past antitrust cases asserting something so broad," he said. The presence of Microsoft's Vista desktop search could be slowing down Google's product merely as an accident of product design, not because of any malicious intent by Microsoft, Helm said. "Even if Microsoft's software was perfectly written, the way Google interacts with it might be bad, and either company might be at fault," he said. "They could have both done the right things in different ways that might conflict with each other." According to a report in The Wall Street Journal Monday, Google sent a white paper to U.S. federal and state antitrust officials in April to try to convince them that Vista makes it difficult for consumers to use rival desktop search software. In its white paper, Google claims that Vista's search boxes and bars -- available in several places in the OS, including the Start menu and in the Windows Explorer file manager -- work only with Microsoft's search and indexing tool. The company also said it is nearly impossible to turn off Vista's indexing, which means a competitor must add a second indexer that slows down a PC. Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes confirmed the company's charge against Microsoft Monday. Microsoft is disputing Google's charges and said that it has worked closely with federal officials to ensure its Vista OS, released to consumers in January, fosters rather than inhibits competition in the area of desktop search. Users can disable Vista's desktop search service, but the company has not made it simple for them to do so, acknowledged Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman. He said this is because the company designed Vista's desktop search specifically "to not affect performance and back off any other programs running" -- including any third-party desktop search software -- in a way that should resolve any claims of anticompetitive behavior, Evans said. Andrew Brust, chief, new technology of consulting firm Twentysix New York, said he used Google's desktop search when it first came out but switched to Microsoft's product when it became available for Windows XP because he preferred it. "Microsoft chose to integrate into Windows, whereas Google decided to be browser-based," he said. "Plus, at least back then, Google installed its own local Web server as part of the product and I really didn't like all that baggage. Microsoft's was just more useful." Brust, who has used Vista in beta form, said integrating desktop search into Vista is "common sense" and suggested that Google's complaints might be sour grapes over Microsoft's own antitrust charges against the search vendor when it unveiled plans toÂ purchase online advertising and marketing powerhouse DoubleClick. Samir Bhavnani, research director for analyst firm Current Analysis West, said that Microsoft's integration of desktop search into Vista was a response to Apple's inclusion of desktop search in their Mac OS, not a move against Google. He said it wouldn't be fair for Google to accuse Microsoft of being anticompetitive without leveling the same charge at Apple. However, Helm contradicted this reasoning and said that Apple was not found in a U.S. court to have a monopoly on PC OSes, while Microsoft was in the DoJ case. "I don't have the impression that Google is worried about Apple," he said.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has released a customized version ofÂ Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) browserÂ in which Google, not Windows Live Search, is the default search engine. Google's customized version of IE 7 can be downloaded from this Web site. In addition to using Google as the default search engine, Google's customized version of IE 7 also provides users with the Google Toolbar and a Google homepage they can personalize. According to a posting by Microsoft Group Program manager Tony Chor on Microsoft's IEBlog, Google and other companies -- including Yahoo Inc. and USAToday.com -- were able to build customized versions of IE 7 by using the Internet Explorer Administration Kit. Microsoft released the toolkit so developers could customize IE, as well as to provide companies with help to configure and deploy the browser through the enterprise, Chor wrote in his posting. Microsoft released IE 7 for Windows XP on Oct. 18. IE 7 is also included inÂ Windows Vista, which is currently available in full release only to business users. Windows Vista will be available to consumers on Jan. 30.
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Live Search Books rivals Google Book Search, but limits selection.