There's a depressing story in Sunday's (6/10) New York Times by Stephen Labaton (link here) about the Bush administration's defense of Microsoft against allegations Google has made in several state venues that the Vista operating system's desktop search feature slows down the opeartion of rival search software. It shouldn't come as a surprise that at the center of the story is yet another Bush administration Department of Justice attorney problem. Specifically, assistant attorney general Thomas O. Barnett of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, wrote a memo defending Microsoft against Google's charge that Microsoft was in violation of the consent agreement it signed in 2001 to settle the antitrust case against it.

While there's nothing specifically wrong with promoting the administration's pro-business policies, Barnett's involvement is problematic:

The official, Thomas O. Barnett, an assistant attorney general, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes. At the firm, Justice Department officials said, he never worked on Microsoft matters. Still, for more than a year after arriving at the department, he removed himself from the case because of conflict of interest issues. Ethics lawyers ultimately cleared his involvement.

While this probably won't become the scandal that the politicization of DOJ hiring and firing practices has, it's an excellent illustration of the problems that high level regulatory capture entails.

The thing that jumped out at me about the article was that the Microsoft search engine in Vista can't be turned off. If I want or prefer Google or any one of several other search engines, I may be able to load them, and they will all run. But the issue then, is which is the default engine, if there is one. It would be easy for Microsoft to stack the deck on that.

It is not clear whether Google's claim that the Vista engine and Google's run at the same time and degrade Google's performance. Anybody know?

Other than the legal point that this probably violates the US court finding, Microsoft also has to face the competitive market criticism that Vista is worse than Windows XP and to stick with XP. That's what I'm doing till I learn how to use Linux.

I am also looking forward to the European reaction. The competition authorities there have been a lot harder on Microsoft than in the US.