Google Seeks Ruling on Microsoft Oversight: The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Google is pressing for an extension to the Justice Department’s oversight of Microsoft’s business practices, which for the most part is set to expire in November, according to a court filing Monday.

“Microsoft’s hardwiring of its own desktop search product into Windows Vista violates the final judgment” in the United States government’s antitrust case against the software maker, Google said in the court document.

Over the last year, Google has complained to state and federal regulators that Microsoft’s Instant Search program, which helps Windows Vista users search their hard drives, slows down third-party desktop search programs. Google has also said that Microsoft makes it hard for PC users to choose alternatives to the built-in search, including its own free Google Desktop program.

The search company’s claims were meant to show that Microsoft was not complying with the antitrust settlement, reached in 2002 after the government concluded that Microsoft used its near-ubiquitous Windows operating system to suppress competition. Microsoft is now bound by a consent decree that requires it to help rivals build software that runs smoothly in Windows.

For Google, those changes did not go far enough. The company asked Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court to extend beyond November parts of the consent decree that govern “middleware,” or software that links different computer programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/technology/26google.html?ref=technology