Update: Microsoft to change Vista desktop search

Microsoft will make changes to its desktop search program following a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) by Google.

Google suggested in a white paper submitted to the DOJ earlier this year that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system puts other search software companies at a disadvantage, making it difficult for users to utilize non-Microsoft desktop-search software. Microsoft has reached an agreement with the DOJ to make it easier for end users to employ desktop search programs made by rival software developers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Microsoft will also provide more documentation and information to developers about how to make those search programs run smoothly, it said.

The changes will be included in Microsoft’s first Vista update, called Service Pack 1, slated to be released later this year, the report said.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Microsoft had agreed to make the “significant changes” in Vista operating system to stay in compliance with a U.S. court agreement in Microsoft’s antitrust case.

Brown’s office intervened in the wake of reports that Microsoft’s new operating system included a desktop search function called “Instant Search” that violated terms of its agreement to open its products to more competition. Google, which offers the most popular search engine on the Internet, said “Instant Search” is a “Microsoft middleware product,” which is subject to the federal agreement in the antitrust case.

The State of California contended that Vista’s desktop search feature is a functionality that did not exist in prior Windows operating systems and is therefore covered under the agreement.

Brown said Microsoft will provide users and computer manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, with greater flexibility to choose and access competing desktop search products.

The agreement was included in a joint status report that was filed Wednesday with federal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., who presided over the 2002 agreement in the case.

“This agreement — while not perfect — is a positive step towards greater competition in the software industry,” said Brown. “It will enhance the ability of consumers to select the desktop search tool of their choice.”

“Microsoft believes that Google’s complaint is without merit,” Microsoft’s lawyers wrote in the status report. “Nevertheless, Microsoft worked with the Plaintiffs in a spirit of cooperation to resolve any issues the complaint may raise.”

Google said the search changes are welcome but more needs to be done.

“Microsoft’s current approach to Vista desktop search clearly violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice,” said David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer. “These remedies are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers.”

Microsoft was found to be operating an illegal monopoly in software by another U.S. District Judge in Washington. Microsoft entered into a settlement agreement with the federal government and attorneys general for several U.S. states to abide by certain rules to allow more competition.

Microsoft had originally denied that its own desktop search interfered with non-Microsoft indexing software, noting that its search indexing could be turned off, although with some difficulty. The Redmond company also seemed to have the DOJ, its former antitrust foe, on its side: Thomas O. Barnett, now the DOJ’s top-ranking antitrust official, recommended that the DOJ and state attorneys general reject Google’s complaint, according to a New York Times report earlier this month.

As part of the desktop search agreement, software vendors will be able to register their products as alternatives for the Vista search. The default search selected by the computer user or OEM will launch whenever Vista launches a search result window, and the default search will have space in Vista’s start menu.

Microsoft will also tell software vendors and OEMs that the desktop search index in Vista is designed to run in the background and “cede precedence over computing resources to any other software product, including third-party search products,” the DOJ said in its portion of the status report. “Microsoft will emphasize that there is no technical reason why OEMs and end-users cannot, if they choose to, install additional desktop search products on their systems.”

The plaintiffs in the case, including 17 states that sued Microsoft for antitrust, are “collectively satisfied that this agreement will resolve any issues” in the Google complaint, the DOJ said.

Elsewhere in the status report, the DOJ said a technical committee overseeing Microsoft’s compliance has hired two consulting firms to check Microsoft’s procedures for identifying communications protocols that it is required to disclose to independent software vendors who want to make their products interoperable with Microsoft’s. In March, Microsoft and the plaintiffs reached an agreement to address concerns over the belated discovery of protocols that plaintiffs believed needed to be disclosed.

The technical committee will extend a royalty-free program for software vendors to receive the protocols, the DOJ said. The royalty-free program will continue 18 months after the date the committee decides the protocol documentation is substantially complete, and the technical committee can extend the program if it believe Microsoft isn’t making progress on the documentation, the DOJ said.

But Microsoft is on schedule with a plan to fix technical documentation used by other software vendors, the DOJ said. Errors in the technical documentation have prompted repeated complaints from the antitrust plaintiffs in recent months, but the DOJ said Microsoft has been able “to keep up with the flow of new technical documentation issues.”

This story was updated on June 20, 2007