Summary: Microsoft and its new allies are still trying to derail Google by criticising the same type of action Microsoft is engaging in without the public's permission and also at the public's expense

YESTERDAY we showed that Microsoft sued Google, this time directly for a change [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Now watch this from yesterday's news:

Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo!, and other opponents of Google's Book Search settlement have proposed an alternative to the controversial legal pact, calling on the US Congress to appoint a "public guardian" to oversee a national database of digital books.

Microsoft wants public control of the books, eh?

We have already explained the role of Yahoo! in this case. After the virtual takeover by Microsoft it's just another sockpuppet. "Microsoft Yahoo Deal Approval Gets Deadline in Europe," says this report from yesterday:

Remember that proposed Microsoft Yahoo search and advertising deal? It's still awaiting regulatory approval, but it might be a step closer to its destiny soon, no matter which way it goes.

It will probably pass at the end, despite sanity and because of lobbying.

"The Microsoft shills are really out in numbers to *** on the iPhone," said to us a reader this afternoon. "That article isn't so much news as it is speculation and casting aspersions. Shows what kind of job CNet's editors are doing.

"I guess they must be really upset at the public acceptance of the death of windows mobile. Playing the Microsoft game, they can't dare bring further attention to the growth of Maemo and spectacular rise of Android by mentioning them, so the obvious point to attack is the now ubiquitous iPhone."

“Playing the Microsoft game, they can't dare bring further attention to the growth of Maemo and spectacular rise of Android by mentioning them, so the obvious point to attack is the now ubiquitous iPhone.”
      --AnonymousI personally distrust CNET because of its actions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. They have many trolls (commenters who are given free laptops from Microsoft for example) and advertising money comes from Microsoft to land in the pockets of people who run CNET.

"This is hot air," our reader adds, "because the Bong is only an advertising front end for Wolfram Alpha. If users are curious about privacy, then they'd be asking about Wolfram Alpha's data retention policies.

"But Microsoft plays on that kind of ignorance, otherwise people would go straight to wolframalpha or else avoid Microsoft completely by going to Google, Cuil, or Baidu."

Microsoft is losing to Google in a very major way, so it is desperate to hurt Google in every possible way.

Going back to the issue of books, Andy Updegrove writes about "The Alexandria Project" (reference to the great libraries of lost knowledge) in a very timely fashion. Here in the UK Microsoft has not only taken control of the British Library [1, 2, 3]; according to Glyn Moody, Microsoft is now taking control of the Royal Society too, just as it did with NASA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and with Feynman lectures on the other side of the Atlantic.

People are getting excited about the news that William Stukeley's Life of Newton is now available online, apple-falling tales inclusive. Just one problem: the super-duper groovy page-turning version only works with Microsoft technology - the same one that infects the British Library's holdings too.

It's rather clear what Microsoft is doing here (which makes its action against Google's Book Search a case of total hypocrisy). Against Monopoly has just published this post about "Creating Artificial Scarcity Of Artwork To Boost Value" ⬆