Guest post by Google sued the U.S. Interior Department late last year and a judge has sided with Google. The WSJ reports that the judge of the case ruled the USID violated the Competition in Contracting Act by requiring all bids to include Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. No word if the USID will appeal the ruling.
Isn’t this article just saying a preliminary injunction has been issued to prevent rollout of the Microsoft deal pending a full trial? So there’s still no real decision on the merits, which will happen later?
Yeah, you are absolutely right:
“The ruling is not a final result so the agency could still try to win the case over the next few weeks”
Glad to see that Google is making some progress here. Microsoft, and others, get preferential treatment all the time by government agencies. It’s always illegal but not often do the competition call the government on it.
I couldn’t agree more. They used to say “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”
Nowadays, it’s “Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.”
Yep and people call Linux users for making up conspiracy theories about this sort of thing, and wonder why no other OS gets a good share in the desktop market.
I understand that there needs to be a balance in life and that all people and companies deserve a fair shake but I’m not certain that I agree with this ruling. Perhaps the gov’t has already looked at their options and have decided on a product they like the best; why should another company be able to come in and sue them and potentially “force” them into a product they don’t want. Wouldn’t that be like putting out a bid to HP, Dell, and Lenovo to buy all gov’t PC’s just to then be sued by Apple for not including them?
I’m all for the government being as transparent as possible to the public. And as much as I hate to admit it, the business community is an extension of the public. (An extension of — not greater than — the public.)
If the government just goes and handpicks a select few vendors (or just Micro$oft) to be included in the tender, then they’re not serving the best interests of the taxpayers nor the business community. The government and the “chosen one(s)” thus comprise an oligarchy.
Nothing is lost by allowing more players to step up to the plate.
I’d rather have a potentially longer and more drawn out process that is marked by fairness, openness and true competition than further reinforcement of certain monopolies.
Yeah, actually I agree with you. From a taxpayer’s perspective I suppose it’s technically better to have many fairly assessed options to choose from. I guess that raised more questions though, such as:1) do they need to readjust their bidding options for every company that comes along and offers their service/product? and 2) How many bids do you draw the line at? If I remember my Air Force days correctly, they required three bids. Our government is already slow enough, I can’t imagine adding any more complexity to the bid process unless the plan is to always stay 2-3 software generations behind
Well, chances are that they didn’t actually go to Microsoft to get the bid. They went to a reseller. And they probably did get three bids as that is normal practice. The reason why Google sued is because the bid required a Microsoft product. That’s like Ford saying you can have any color you want as long as its black. There is suppose to be choice. All the bid should have done is list requirements, not products.