Google Whines to Government About Vista Search

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Concedes_to_Google_and_States_Will_Change_Vista_Search/1182350094' target='_blank'>http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Concedes_to_Google_and_States_Will_Change_Vista_Search/1182350094</a><br /><br /></div><i>"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."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/google-whines.gif" /> <br /><br />There's a lot that I respect about Google, but today I believe they've shamed themselves. Rather than making Google Desktop Search a better product and competing against Microsoft, they've instead gone crying to the government saying that Microsoft did something unfair by enhancing the search features in Windows. The operating system has been able to search going as far back as Windows 95 (I don't think there was a search function in Windows 3.1, was there?), but the search function was inefficient because it only searched when you asked it to. The smart way to search is to keep an ongoing index of content, and search that. <br /><br />Can you imagine how slow Google would be if, when you requested a search, it sent out its search bots and tried to find you the results in real-time? That would be ridiculous. Yet that's exactly what Google expects Microsoft to have kept doing with Windows - they're calling the enhanced search functions in Vista "middleware", meaning not part of the operating system. Google thinks that the search function in Vista, which builds an index and searches that, isn't a core function of the operating system and is instead a "product" that competes with Google Desktop Search, and that's somehow unfair.<br /><br />I haven't installed Google Desktop Search under Vista, but I did try it on Windows XP, and I didn't like it - I preferred the MSN/Windows Desktop Search client because it wasn't tied to the browser and just made more sense to me. Google can't make a desktop application to save their life. Now, if for some reasons Google Desktop search can't install properly under Vista because of something that Microsoft has done and it's impossible for Google to work around it, then <i>perhaps</i> Google has a case here. But the way I read it, Google is upset that Microsoft enhanced desktop search under Vista, and that's just whining.

[Felix Torres]

Why shouldn't Google whine?
Whining worked for Real, for Adobe, Netscape, and Sun.
Chances are they already whine to the EU anyway...
And Symantec is also whining.

After all, if they don't whine and stop MS from improving their product, they can't *possibly* stay in business, right? They'd really rather MS just acted like a classical monopolist and kept on selling Win95 unto the end of time.

Think about it, now all the whiners have to *spend* money improving their products...
How dare Microsoft improve their existing features!

[Dyvim]

I think you're wrong here.

Google is not complaining that MS Search indexes (just as Google search does), but that there's not an easy way to turn off the built-in search in case you choose to use another. So that would mean having 2 different search engines indexing at once, which is what Google was complaining about.

I'm glad that MS has improved their search with Vista, but I'd also like an easy and intuitive way to install another product as the default search engine and disable the built-in one. It should be just as easy as choosing Firefox as my default browser instead of IE.

I'm behind Google 100% on this one. (and no, I don't use Google Search either)

[Jason Dunn]

...but that there's not an easy way to turn off the built-in search in case you choose to use another.

Let's see here - I click start, I type Index, I get the Indexing Options dialogue box. True, there's no "turn off" button, but I just have to click "MODIFY" for each of the four locations being indexed and it will exclude them...meaning the indexing engine isn't indexing anything at all. That doesn't seem so hard to me.

[Phronetix]

Google's been focusing on increasing its clout in DC by expanding its lobby to twelve positions and we see the fruits right here. I think this is about the lawyers wrestling for positioning, seeing how receptive congress is to greater and greater sanctions against MS.

Search as part of the desktop and the OS is fair ground for anyone, including MS. Being able to clearly turn it, or to select a default search app is also a fair request. MS deliberate made it not obvious, but also not tricky for the average user to turn it off. If I was responsible for that bit of design, I'd be proud. It was clever, and its clever design will buy some time before MS needs to make an off button an option. And it opens up more users to the MSN live or whatever it is called product. If only more people would jump onto the Vista bandwagon, is probably their thought right now.

Hope that makes sense... typed it in a rush.

D

[Jason Dunn]

Search as part of the desktop and the OS is fair ground for anyone, including MS. Being able to clearly turn it, or to select a default search app is also a fair request. MS deliberate made it not obvious, but also not tricky for the average user to turn it off.

I'm curious, how does this compare to OS X? How do you turn off the indexing?

[Dyvim]

That doesn't seem so hard to me.

No, not to you, but you are hardly an example of the average computer user. :)

[Phronetix]

Search as part of the desktop and the OS is fair ground for anyone, including MS. Being able to clearly turn it, or to select a default search app is also a fair request. MS deliberate made it not obvious, but also not tricky for the average user to turn it off.

I'm curious, how does this compare to OS X? How do you turn off the indexing?

See, here is an example of Dennis not reading the article carefully and/or understanding the terminology. I thought that MS Search was describing a built in search widget for the internet, not for the pc file system itself. Okay, so this is like Spotlight on the Mac.

Based on that revelation, I am fully in agreement with Jason. Google is whining baselessly. I mean come on, build your own operating system, then you can do whatever you want.

As for spotlight, it can be unselected in precisely the same way as MS Search. No magic off button. Funny that.