14 DAY TRIAL // The Mountain View company Google claims that Microsoft's Windows Vista violates some antitrust rules that make the Google offline tools almost inaccessible. Basically, Google sustained that Redmond's latest operating system doesn't allow the installation of other search utilities such as Google Desktop and, if it lets users run them, the applications are working quite slowly. The Wall Street Journal published a detailed article concerning the Google complaint in which it is mentioned that Microsoft's officials are somehow agreeing that Vista's search functions are not working quite properly.
"In its April white paper, Google alleged that Microsoft didn't allow search bars in Vista that consumers can use to initiate searches to work with desktop-search software other than Microsoft's, said lawyers familiar with the matter. In addition, Google argued it was practically impossible for consumers to turn off the indexing feature of Microsoft desktop-search software that catalogs users' files, which meant a computer's performance was slowed down if it used a second desktop-search application," the Wall Street Journal said according to the Search Engine Land.
Microsoft's response was quite unexpected because one of its spokesmen sustained that although it is possible to disable the search functions implemented into the operating system, this is quite difficult to be done. "The company said consumers can access Google Desktop Search in a variety of ways through Vista, including directly by icons on the desktop and in the "Start" menu. It further said that Microsoft's desktop-search indexer doesn't use any computing power when Google's own indexer or other applications are in use, so it doesn't affect performance in the way Google alleged," the publication explained.
As you can see, the catfight between Google and Microsoft is quite impressive and this new Google complaint looks like a revenge over the Redmond company. Back in May, the software giant Microsoft requested the regulators investigations because they considered that DoubleClick's acquisition by Google was unfair.