Google takes on Microsoft in court

After outsmarting Microsoft in the internet search business, and starting to chip away at the company's hegemony in office software, Google has opened up a new front in its intensifying battle against the granddaddy of technology companies - this time launching a legal challenge to Microsoft's new operating system Windows Vista.

Google says that Microsoft is breaching competition because Vista makes it harder to use Google's desktop search tool - which combs through a computer's hard drive and the user's emails looking for information - than it does to use Window's own search function.

The complaint mirrors the long-running competition complaints over how Microsoft integrated its web browser Internet Explorer and other applications with Windows, to the detriment of other software developers. Microsoft has been operating under a Department of Justice consent decree since a 2002 settlement, and Google says that Vista violates the promises of good behaviour that Microsoft made at that time. "Microsoft's current approach with Vista desktop search violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice," a Google spokesman said.

The search engine company says it wants Microsoft to make it simple for users to turn off Vista's built-in search function. Microsoft, for its part, says it is perfectly easy to install and access the rival Google Desktop software.

Google has expressed similar concerns before, but in recent weeks it has decided to push its case more forcibly in the legal arena. In April, it sent a 50-page submission to the Justice Department outlining its allegations, and the issue is set for an airing in a report by a Washington DC court later this month.

It is not clear that the Justice Department will ultimately side with Google, however, and it has reportedly told state prosecutors to take no action on its complaint against Microsoft.