Summary: Los Angeles perhaps just the first amongst a chain of local authorities that move from Microsoft to Google; progress made on Microsoft's massive tax dodge investigation

Novell and Microsoft suffered a major blow in the City of Los Angeles and it seems to have set a precedence which is spreading to the East Coast too. From the news:

Orlando goes with Google to save on e-mail

[...]

Orlando's contract includes Google Docs, which includes word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software meant to compete directly with Microsoft Office. But Cross said the city will stick with Office for now to avoid the expense of retraining employees.

Microsoft must be getting very nervous and envious of Google right now.

“Microsoft must be getting very nervous and envious of Google right now.”In other news, Mr. Reifman, a former Microsoft employee, makes progress with his action against Microsoft's massive tax dodge [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. According to his latest update, "Washington State Attorney General Reviews Our Public Records Request," which means that the next step is likely centralisation of hard evidence (or proof). Mr. Reifman should be applauded as about a decade ago, another Microsoft insider helped expose financial fraud inside the company [1, 2, 3]. He lost his job as a result, Microsoft paid him millions of dollars to shut up, and with enough cronies inside the United States government Microsoft managed to eventually get away with it. Microsoft will hopefully not attempt to bribe Mr. Reifman so that he shuts up, just as it did before in order to bury evidence. Can Microsoft pull some crony strings to also derail Orlando's migration away from Microsoft to Google? Microsoft did fight back against Los Angeles, but eventually it lost. Microsoft's software is too expensive and outdated. ⬆