Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 13th May 2006 22:03 UTC
"The US government has given its thumbs-up to Microsoft's search box plans for Vista, shrugging off concerns raised recently by Google. While criticizing Microsoft for its implementation of its existing antitrust accord, regulators appear satisfied with the software maker's plans for Windows Vista, including a new search box that is part of Internet Explorer 7." On a related note, "the Justice Department is seeking to extend the term of its landmark antitrust settlement with Microsoft by two years, blaming Microsoft's slowness in providing technical documentation to rivals."
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Member since:
2005-11-10
I think Google went overboard. Nobody has a problem with Firefox, Konqueror, etc. defaulting to Google or including built-in Google support. But the second Microsoft does something as trivial as have a default, they get taken to task (or to court, as it were).
The rules are different when you're a convicted monopolist. You can't legally get away with the same things as the smaller, non-monopoly players. The biggest difference is that Microsoft makes Windows, Microsoft makes IE, and Microsoft makes MSN search, so it's natural to be worried about them illegally leveraging their monopoly position (yet again!) to give one of their own products an unfair advantage in the marketplace. In the Firefox example you mention, the OS maker is different from the browser maker which are both different from the search engine provider, so Firefox defaulting to Google isn't the same thing at all. It isn't even close. Also, the Firefox box gives you a choice of search providers, with Google being the original default. In the IE7 beta I just downloaded, MSN isn't just the default, it's the only choice offered. Not much of a "choice", is it?
Anyway, I think Google's solution to the problem is simple, and they've already implemented it. When you visit Google in the most recent IE7 beta, you see a big yellow box in the upper right-hand corner of the page with an arrow pointing up at the search box and it reads, "Click here to make Google your default search." One or two clicks and that nasty MSN bug is fixed. Choice restored. Thanks for that, Google.
But I fully expect MS to make the process for switching your default search provider much more difficult in the final release.
Edited 2006-05-14 12:48