http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070907-judge-lets-google-file-brief-in-vista-search-antitrust-case.html

Google has gotten an official nod to file a brief critical of Microsoft's compliance with the antitrust decree with the US government, as the search giant does not feel that Microsoft has done enough to allow third-party desktop searches to function in the same way as the integrated search in Windows Vista. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave Google the go-ahead in an order this week, despite the fact that she feels that Google's complaint has already been appropriately addressed.

Late last week the DoJ reviewed a Windows Vista machine with beta changes meant to address concerns raised by Google. The DoJ said last week that Microsoft's compliance on the matter was satisfactory, but we believe that this battle will continue because Google does not believe Microsoft is acting fairly.

Google has been quietly fighting Vista's desktop search for months now. It started in June when the company alleged that Vista's own indexing service could not be properly disabled and that it caused system performance problems when customers used competing desktop search products, such as Google Desktop Search. Google argued that the behavior was anticompetitive because it discouraged customers from installing anything else.