James Moody: Geek in ParadiseMusings of a Techie in Hawaii |
After making changes to my robots.txt file a month or so ago, the site has finally reached zero supplemental pages in the Google SERP’s. I’ve heard that it was extremely hard to get to that point using a WordPress platform, but it has happened!
I’ll post my robots.txt later on for those interested.
Tags: Google Supplemental Search WordPress
Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post Intelligencer posted another update on the Antitrust case against Microsoft this morning regarding Google seeking inclusion into the case. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling as reported from Bloomberg News: “Google is not a party in the case,” the judge said at a hearing today in Washington. “I do rely on the plaintiffs, as representatives of consumers, to report problems to me.”
It was expected that she would rule this way and was the right thing to do. Google, as a direct competitor to Microsoft, can’t honestly “share the public’s interest”. I wonder how many actually fell for that line? Google, imho, was feeding info to the Plaintiffs to try and get the ruling that would allow its software to take over an outstanding feature of Vista. There are already some Googleites that honestly believe Vista was targetting Google Desktop for poor performance and crashing issues. Google’s software is the problem, not Vista. Google is already paying OEM’s to include it’s software (i.e. what most would call crapware) into brand new PC’s that redirect your browser to Google ad-laden sites if you mistype URL’s. Now, with Instant Search still able to provide results, maybe we can get back to a little more stability in our PC’s. People will still install the Google software, for sure, but at least it will be separate from the integrated search and problems can be isolated to offending 3rd party software and not Windows itself. The biggest complaints against Vista are 3rd party related, software and drivers. I wonder why that is?!
Does Google open it’s own case against Microsoft now? I’d like to think Google’s lawyer’s are smarter than that. It couldn’t possibly end up in a positive light in Google’s favor, so I think they’ll just slink back home and wait for their next chance to pounce. Maybe they can jump faster next time instead of waiting til the last minute.
There’s a tad more to read on the whole thing, so make sure to read Todd’s posts on the recent happenings. He’s provided excellent updates through it all.
Tags: Microsoft Google Desktop Search Antitrust
Major Nelson of the XBox Team made it known today that XBox.com will receive a redesign starting at 4am PST Tuesday. Plans are for no downtime at all during the swap. Be interesting to see if that goes as planned for sure.
No new features are planning to be added supposedly. Changes include:
I’ve been checking out XBox.com a bit since I picked up Shadowrun for Vista (which has turned out be a darn fun game contrary to reviews), so it’ll be interesting to see what they have in store for the site. My GamerTag is GeekInParadise (go figure) if you want to add me as a friend to get in some of the Vista related achievements (since there’s not a ton of us compared to 360′ers).
Well, apparently the agreement that the States and Microsoft came to last week regarding Vista’ Indexing service/Search aren’t good enough for Google. Google filed a 7 page brief today stating that the intended changes to Vista that everyone was comfy with last week, still don’t go far enough. Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post Intelligencer broke the news earlier today on his Microsoft Blog.
Google maintains that the intended changes do not go far enough to ensure people can use their desktop search product of choice. They also state that Microsoft is intending to remove the Search option from the Start Menu. Huh? In the Ars Technica report, Microsoft will use an existing location on the Start Menu that a user can select to use their chosen Desktop Search product. Is Google just making this stuff up as they go or what? It looks like they are trying to come up with any minute way possible of not losing another avenue of collecting user data to me.
I would love to see the Judge turn around and rule that integrated search is an allowed function to be built into the OS and then rescind the previous concessions that Microsoft agreed to make in the original settlement, leaving Google with nothing at all but lost lawyer fees. Google is getting very greedy with this and I’d love to see them fall flat in this endeavor of theirs. It just flat out reeks of a child not getting his way and throwing a tantrum in hopes of getting it.
I’m sure there’s more to come…
Updates: Mary Jo Foley has her take on the situation at All About Microsoft.
Microsoft fires off it’s own 7-page filing (via Todd Bishop) as to why Google should not be allowed to participate in the ruling. I didn’t realize this before that Google wasn’t a Plaintiff themselves, but was providing information to the Plaintiffs. The Judge overseeing the case, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, has a history of not allowing outsiders to join in cases which doesn’t bode well for Google’s attempts to interfere in the case. It should also be noted that in Google’s filing, that it “shares the public interest”. Last I checked, only 19 of the 50 States were involved in the proceedings. “Sharing the public’s interest” doesn’t include loss of revenue by chance, does it? But, ehh, whatever.
Section II.B.2 of the Joint Status Report references the steps to be taken by Microsoft to make the necessary changes to the Vista OS to comply with the recent complaint. I fail to see anywhere where Microsoft is removing links to Search as claimed by Google, only adding a link to the Default Desktop Search Program (selectable by the end user).
Josh Catone of Read/Write Web posts his take on Google’s “PR Stunt”.
Tags: Microsoft Google Desktop Search Indexing
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