Public Eye: Google Continues to Storm Washington

It's official. Google wins the prize for the company most covered in this blog. From targeting schools with its education software stack, to offering the Department of Defense an enhanced version of Google Earth, to hosting events in D.C. to explain to systems integrators how the search-engine-that-is-so-much-more-than-a-search-engine plays in government, Google has made its presence known in the capital city.

But lately, the company has been driving policy more than product marketing, and declaring war against its nemesis. Google helped write an antitrust complaint to the Justice Department claiming that Microsoft's Vista operating system discriminates against Google software; government responded by ordering that Vista users be able to set a non-Microsoft program as the default desktop search engine. Not satisfied, Google most recently pressed for an extension to the Justice Department's oversight of Microsoft's business practices that resulted from the antitrust case in 2002, the New York Times reported, which is set to expire in November.

So the question then becomes, what kind of impact Google's efforts will have in the long run. At the very least, the company is a proving gnat that Microsoft can't seem to swat away; but at worst, Google could drive government to lay more restrictions and oversight on the software giant. Certainly, the amount of muscle that Google has to throw has increased, thanks not only to good stock numbers, but to strategic efforts to lobby those on the Hill. And regardless of how much progress they do make in taking Microsoft down a peg or two, Google is succeeding with its ultimate goal: To make a lot of noise that causes people -- and government -- to take notice.