Microsoft still playing dirty?

by Sarah Beaumont

For years one of the most popular images of Microsoft was one of a company that did everything in its power to control as much of the operating system and software market as it possibly could. Now whether this is true or not is debatable, what is not debatable is that monopolies in the technology industry are not a good thing.

Just to fill all of you who don’t know in; Google has accused Microsoft of making it difficult for users who are running Microsoft’s latest OS Vista to run a different desktop search engine. Google claim that although the user has a choice to run Vista's built in search engine or a competitor's desktop search (e.g. Google’s engine) Microsoft has designed Vista in such a way that if a user is not using Vista's built in search function the whole operating system slows down and it becomes frustrating to run a search of your computer's hard drive.

After Google made their complaint – confidentially as part of the consent decree proceedings set up to monitor Microsoft for any anticompetitive conduct - there have been many controversial opinions expressed on the subject and Microsoft has now agreed to make changes to Vista to eliminate the problem.
Now apart from the fact that it’s quite remarkable that Microsoft would try to compete using such underhanded methods, especially after they have already lost cases of anticompetitive behavior, a more interesting matter is the type of comment this issue is generating on blogs and Internet forums.

It seems that the common saying “To live is to take sides” is ringing true. There are strong debates over the merits of Google’s complaint raging all over the Internet and Microsoft seems to have gained a few pretty loyal supporters who are defending the software developer to a degree that is usually associated with Apple and OS X users.

Well if everybody is going to be taking sides, I’m taking one myself. In my opinion Google’s complaints are valid. Vista should give the user the option to run any program that has not been developed by Microsoft on any Windows (and now Vista) operating system. 

It should be up to the user to decide what program or application they wish to use and no company, be it Microsoft, Apple or Google should force a user into using only their software. This is why I think Google’s complaints are legitimate - they are not asking users to use their desktop search engine over Vista's, they just want to give people the right to choose. What’s more, if they choose to use something other than what comes with a particular OS the application should be able to run it to the best of its ability.

So I personally applaud Google in their challenge to Microsoft, after all they are only fighting so that the user (that’s you and I) can choose…and in the process win a few supporters over.

*** Thanks for all the help on the post Dan - much appreciated.

2007/06/22 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

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