Judge Blocks Gov't From Upgrading Email System To Microsoft In Google Lawsuit
from the suing-the-government dept
Back in November, we were one of the first to report that Google had sued the US government after the Department of the Interior had put out a Request for Quotation (RFQ) for an upgraded email system that stated upfront that the solution had to be based on Microsoft. Google, who had been talking to the Interior Department about using its own solution, had received promises that the RFQ would not be biased towards Microsoft -- and thus were shocked when it wasn't just biased towards Microsoft, but restricted only to Microsoft.In the first phase of the lawsuit, it appears that Google has made a compelling enough case that the judge has issued an injunction, preventing the DOI from moving forward with the email upgrade. The LA Times headline and opening graf is a bit hyperbolic concerning this "victory." Google certainly hasn't won the lawsuit, and it's hardly a "major victory" at this point, but it at least suggests that the judge finds Google's basic claims credible. DOI can try to rewrite its RFQ to get out of the lawsuit or it can protest the injunction and the lawsuit will continue.
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Filed Under: email, interior department, us government
Companies: google, microsoft
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About Time
In the era of huge deficit spending free software should be considered a viable option.
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Re: About Time
Why is it that the government of the supposedly free nation is so bad at looking at all the options?
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Many government systems are sold on MS
If it were up to me, I would BAN any Microsoft systems related to email. Don't people realize that MS email products are the major computer virus vector?
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No conspiracy, just lazy
My only concern about moving a Federal agency's email to a Google solution would be the potential for malicious outsiders to somehow more easily gain access to it from outside the agency network. Now that being said I don't think it is the sole reason to not look at Google but it should be taken into consideration. (As should the weaknesses of an MS solution).
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Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
Upon what is this concern based?
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Re: Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
When China hacked into G-mail? Don't know if it's valid, but it is a concern.
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Re: Re: Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
Anyone know of a hack-proof e-mail client?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
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Re: About Time
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RFQ?
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Re: Many government systems are sold on MS
And by suggesting that the government should ban a specific vendor (like MS) is basically saying you support what they are doing here, just not who they want to steer towards.
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Re: Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
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a company named sue
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Re: No conspiracy, just lazy
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One of the happiest days of my IT life was when we moved to a standards-based open-source mail server. The system is more secure, reliable, and manageable, while only requiring 5% of the hardware required by Microsoft.
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Re: a company named sue
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Google isn't an upgrade
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Re: Google isn't an upgrade
Based on my own company's experience the plural of anecdote |= data.
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Re:
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Re: Many government systems are sold on MS
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Legacy and Mashups
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Re: Re: Many government systems are sold on MS
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=google+apps+supports+ldap
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Right thing to do
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Re: Re: Re: Many government systems are sold on MS
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Re: Right thing to do
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Oh NO not Google... not an advertising company, trying to flog software !!!..
Clearly leading the field.
The OTHER company, is an advertising company, with no depth or real experience in providing software products, support, upkeep, security and so on.
If you want to buy a car, or 10,000 cars, are you going to buy it off 'modern motor magazing' or are you going to go to a company like GM, or Toyota, or Ford ?
Google has no track record for the development and deployment of applications and software systems to clients.
It is clear also that Microsoft, due to their market leadership is far more capable of the development, support and success of a large project.
Sure googles does search ok, it does advertising even better, but search engines and advertising are not 'real' software, and google is not regestered as a company that creates and sells software as a business.
To gain a contract like that, you not only have to meet the basic requirements of the contract, but you also have to show you're ability to do the job, from present and past experience.
You also have to show you have the capabilities of providing the necessary level of technical support to keep the service working.
Google does not have a good reputation in software development, support, or major application rollouts.
MS has massive experience in those area's, and it will be a real shame if the court forces the Government to choose something that is second rate.
It might be some of the reason why the US is in so much trouble financially right now.
They waste money, hand over fist, with things, that for most people is a no brainer.
I would have rejected them as well, as most would, without even thinking.
Just saying you can deliver something, does not mean you are capable of it, and it certainly does not show you have a track record of being able to make such a project work !!.
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Re: Re: Right thing to do
Google has a very poor record of poor products, and in using information to make money.
So to trust them with more information would be a risk, people trust google far less than Microsoft.
They also know that Microsoft is a company that has massive experience in software development, and product support, and services.
And Google, we'll does not !!
MS is a company that creates software to make a living, and they do it very well.
Google is a company that sell advertising to make a living, and they have not being doing software for a very long time, and they have next to no experience with the commercial software development chain.
Again it would be like the differnece between buying a car off a known car manufacturer, like GM or buying one off someone who have only ever sold cars in the newpaper.
They might be very good at selling cars, but they might not have a clue about how to design and build a car.
Same with google, they do search 'ok', they do security poorly, and they do software rarly, and they support their products even less.
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Re: About Time
Google has experience in some area's but not in commercial softare development, not in support, and certainly not in trust.
Believe it or not, far more people actualy LIKE and TRUST products from MS, who have been there for us for 25 years.
And its clear they strive to provide continusously improving services.
Googles does not have that reputation, and whenever it gets a chance to gain the reputation, they fail.
It is not goign to be hard for the court to decide that google in this case just cannot cut it. And crying to the courts will not gain them anything.
But it will cost the US Government lots more money, and delays, which the US cannot afford..
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Re: Re: Re: Right thing to do
Except for myself and millions of others who run their own mail client.
MS = security? - Please, sheesh.
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Re: Oh NO not Google... not an advertising company, trying to flog software !!!..
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On a personal note I use Google Apps for my business and my school switched over to Google Apps while I was working in the IT department there without issue. Last I heard they were quite happy with the service.
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Re: Re: About Time
Excatly, Google does not have the reputation to put out utter crap formats that later versions of the same software cannot handle properly. That anyone would dare to put their valuable data into crap that needs 6000 pages to describe (OOXML) is beyond me.
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Re: Re: Many government systems are sold on MS
Active Directory supports a bastardized version of LDAP, and every time there is a patch for active directory, something gets screwed up with our SAMBA servers. I hate updating our AD server, because invariably after doing so, I am recompiling SAMBA and trying to fix something that is broken. At home, I've switched away from using Active Directory as my LDAP server, and now have clients authenticate with an OpenLDAP server. Since then, my support requirements have dropped through the floor. Wish I could do the same at work, but my boss won't allow me to switch because "nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft." Found that using winbind fixes a lot of these problems, but with winbind, I have an additional mechanism that can break.
I would wonder why all these "other" systems did not support such a universal authentication store.
Most of them do. LDAP is pretty common, and most tools out there support some sort of LDAP authentication. My mail servers all authenticate against LDAP, since I have a fair amount of virtual users I don't want to create local accounts for. Dovecot, courier, and postfix all support LDAP authentication, as well as postgres/mysql authentication.
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Re:
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