Microsoft, Google and friends in the DOJ

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Jun 18, 20072 mins

Best of the blogs: The snarky Robert X. Cringely is asking Whom do you anti-trust, part deux? First, Microsoft urges the Department of Justice to investigate Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. One good turn deserves another, Google insists, and returns the favor with claims that Windows Vista is a patent violator. “I don’t see the feds blocking any of these deals or doing anything of substance in one direction or the other,” Cringe goes out on a limb of sorts.

From the feature well: Simply put, “today’s networked storage must be managed with a deeper awareness of business objectives,” explains Mario Apicella in Suit up you storage network with business sense. Think data classification, continuous data protection, data deduplication and tiered storage — all of which, Apicella adds, alleviate the pain of enterprise data management. No small task, that, but are the tools to help. And Mr. Apicella gets at the increasingly critical question: are backups a waste of time?

Search: Microsoft corporate vice president of intellectual property Marshall Phelps says that Google may not be the answer for poor nations. Personally, I never knew any of them were looking to the search engine for salvation. Okay, okay, it’s the ‘next big breakthrough mentality’ and not Google itself that he’s referring to. Google, meanwhile, launches a public policy blog to focus on U.S. government legislation and regulation.

The news beat: ClearCube unwraps what it calls a long-distance version of its thin client PC system, meaning users can access the blades from thousands of miles away, rather than the standard 200 meters. The HP Technology Forum kicking off today brings a strong focus on virtualization, more so, in fact, than any other category. And Talend applies SaaS to data integration.