The New York Times reports that Google has filed a confidential antitrust complaint with federal and state officials alleging that features in Windows Vista impair Google Desktop Search. It’s like deja vu all over again, with the New York Times reporting today that Google has filed a confidential antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the U.S. Department of Justice. According to the Times, the complaint alleges that the Windows Vista search feature slows down Google’s competing Google Desktop Search (GDS) program, discouraging consumers from using its search program. Windows Vista’s search feature cannot be disabled, thereby forcing users to forego GDS, or put up with drastically reduced system performance as both search programs index the contents of the hard drive. The article quotes Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith saying that lawyers and engineers at Microsoft had been working with “both state and federal officials” in recent days to find an accommodation to Google’s complaints. As the battle for consumer dominance shifts from operating systems to Web-based applications, Microsoft and Google have increasingly been pushed into competition with each other. As a result, the companies have increasingly tangled over issues ranging from Google’s Book Search feature to competing enterprise search and personal productivity applications. According to the Times article, Google complained to federal and state prosecutors, claiming that Microsoft was violating the 2002 antitrust settlement against the company, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit consumer choice. That suit, originally brought by Web browser company NetScape, alleged that Microsoft used its operating system monopoly to push NetScape out of the Web browser market by tying Windows and its competing Internet Explorer browser closely together. Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly, but an Appeals Court ruling allowed the company to narrowly escape being broken up. In return, Microsoft agreed to take a number of steps to avoid future anticompetitive behavior, including information sharing with competitors, opening parts of its proprietary source code, unbundling middleware, and loosening its grip on PC manufacturers. According to sources in the article, including Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Google complaint, which has not been made public, is eerily similar to NetScape’s original compliant. “In concept, if not directly word for word, it is the Microsoft-Netscape situation,” Blumenthal is quoted as saying in the Times article. While the NetScape complaint raised red flags in a pro-competition Clinton Administration Justice Department, Google’s alarms about antitrust are getting a very different reception by the Bush Administration this time around, the article notes. That may be due, in part, to high-powered Justice officials with ties to Microsoft, including Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, formerly of Vice Chairman of the antitrust division at Covington & Burling, a firm that represented Microsoft in its antitrust case against the government and continues to represent the company. According to the Times article, Barnett sent a memo to states prosecutors urging them to reject Google’s complaint, reiterating arguments that Microsoft made in its defense. The memo “raised eyebrows” among States attorneys general, and may have had the exact opposite effect: many states are now looking closely at Google’s complaint and considering action, and the Department of Justice is considering whether to take part in those actions, the Times article says. Smith, of Microsoft, said he was unaware of the Barnett memo. Stay tuned… Technology Industry