In the last week or two, Google's been complaining to US courts claiming Microsoft is breaching the conditions imposed on it due to it being convicted of monopolistic behaviour. It's complaint was that the new in-built search in Vista is not replaceable and cannot be turned off.
But even though all you need to do to turn it off is just stop the search service from running (can be easily done in the setup routine), Microsoft responded promptly and said they'd open up the interface, give their search service the lowest priority on the computer, and inform users of alternatives through the search interface, in changes slated for Vista SP1 to be released later this year.
Google however, is still not happy:
"It appears that more may need to be done to provide a truly unbiased choice of desktop search products in Vista and achieve compliance with the Final Judgment," attorneys for the search giant wrote in a seven-page brief filed with the US District Court.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista-search-changes-not-enough-Google/0,130061733,339279081,00.htm?feed=rss
Er...hello, how come you're not suing Apple (with Spotlight tightly integrated into Mac OSX) and all the various Linux distributions (e.g. Novell's OpenSuSE with Beagle in-built into it's interface)? Would you let Microsoft redirect search requests in your Google search box to Live Search because you happen to be the market leader?
The only reason is probably because they're cool companies with cool technologies, and suing them would be reputation suicide. For Apple though, there's another reason - Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO also sits on Apple's board. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a 'powered by Google' link in Mac OSX's Spotlight either in Leopard or the next Mac OSX version.
This just smells of a targeted attack on a competitor, hitting them while they're down, well knowing that they're still injured and being punished for past crimes that are no longer relevant these days.
It's powerful relationship with Apple aside, Google also practically dominates the search landscape and is actively pursuing new web apps, making it well on the way for achieving massive dominance itself. In fact, some are already calling Google 'Microsoft 2.0'. Along with it's habit of hording personal information whenever it can get its grubby hands on it and using it for it's own benefit (Fear of Google - FOG), it's doesn't seem like the perfect internet company poster-child anymore.
If it weren't for the fact that much of Google's technology is actually better than its competitors, it'd be in big trouble. I guess 'do no evil' only applies when it suits them.
Even the generally anti-Microsoft digg crowd agrees - that doesn't happen very often at all.
On a sidenote, what do Google employees actually do with their time? It seems like all Google's doing nowadays is buying a heap of startups (Zenter being the latest one), integrating that, then releasing that unto the world. Then maybe you get a few features once in a while, but that's it. Where's the new revolutionary, never-seen-before products and technologies? Google Maps, gMail and possibly gReader aside, there hasn't been anything particularly special or unique come out from it lately (Street View and Google Gears aren't really new and Google Analytics isn't really mainstream).
More importantly, why haven't they solved the 'inability to search within AJAX, Flash and Silverlight sites' problem yet?
Stop whining Google and give us more of the free cool stuff we've all come to expect from you!
P.S. I just had an idea - given a few more years for Google to get some decent data, it'd be cool if Google Maps allowed users to view past shots of a particular location, allowing them to compare the changes in a particular area, e.g. before and after a freeway is built in an area, or a building was rebuilt.