Google sues feds over Microsoft-centric bidding requirement | Hacker News Reader

Google sues feds over Microsoft-centric bidding requirement

arstechnica.com

89 pointslotusleaf198724 comments

This type of thing isn't all that uncommon in municipal purchasing; the Microsoft-centric spec or the lawsuit. Our startup does a lot of business with city, county, and state governments in the purchasing space. I can't tell you how many times we receive a spec that is written to fit a specific product from a specific vendor. It's the latter part that gets them in trouble. Our product relies on a competitive bidding environment with multiple qualified vendors, so we do a lot of specification consulting. This usually means working with managers to pound department heads over the skull with the changes for a few days before they cave in and allow the changes. This happens in the private sector as well, but no one can sue if they aren't allowed in the bid, so the incentive isn't as strong.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the government employees in these situations. Imagine you have a staff full of people with a specific skill set -- a bunch of MCSEs, for example -- yet the law says you must write your specifications in such a way that any vendor can answer the RFP. What are you supposed to do with your team? There is often, but not always, a change management factor applied to bidders where significant changes are required, but managers don't always accept these facts. They don't understand, for example, why the guy who was trained to fix John Deer tractors can't readily switch to servicing a fleet of Kubota tractors without taking technical courses on the new product and changing out some tooling. These things cost money that may not be made up by a short term savings on capital expenditure. The problem is, "that's the next guy's problem".

I just hope that the result of this lawsuit is what's good for the US Government, not just what's good for Google.

"They don't understand, for example, why the guy who was trained to fix John Deer tractors can't readily switch to servicing a fleet of Kubota tractors without taking technical courses on the new product and changing out some tooling. These things cost money that may not be made up by a short term savings on capital expenditure."

They do understand, that is the reason for standards that you could enforce as a mayor customer, if not on all your operations, in your primary ones. It cost a lot of money to depend on just only one company that knows you can't change to their competence(monopoly cost), too.

Standards don't solve everything. There is always a change management component, and nothing is free. To use the tractor example, Kubota may offer to provide tooling and training for "free", but they're not eating the cost. It's built in to their price. Say they still come in at a price lower than the incumbent. There are still going to be unforeseen variables.

I'm not saying the incumbent should always win. Far from it. We've bult a business on disrupting that exact scenario, but you'll find that your customer relationships are short lived if you treat vendors as universally interchangeable cogs. You have to listen carefully to the vendors and the stakeholders inside the purchasing organization, and make sure you hold the challenger accountable for their promises.

Anecdotally (from a government scientist), when hiring individuals for gov't work, if you know a good candidate, you write the job description for the candidate. This is because all hires (to avoid nepotism) go through a central office, which works with a checklist of qualifications from the job description.

It could be that when writing a RFQ that there is a similar method: one decides first what product/team you want, then write the RFQ to match that product/team. Not that that excuses the gov't just that it's a standard way to game the system.

Folks do try this, but since government hiring goes through the Office of Personnel Management (that is the "central office" you were referring to), they find that there are far more folks who meet these specs than they think. Especially once the veteran preference gets added into the mix.

I work part-time with the department of interior, and they've tried writing job specs like this, and the person they wanted to hire has never made it through OPM.

> It could be that when writing a RFQ that there is a similar method: one decides first what product/team you want, then write the RFQ to match that product/team.

This is done all the time in private industry as well. "Politics" isn't limited just to governments.

> I just hope that the result of this lawsuit is what's good for the US Government, not just what's good for Google.

Indeed. But is it good for the US government (or any other IT user) to lock themselves in to one supplier? Probably not.

While I see your logic and I'm sure you are spot on, it doesn't mean it's right. All of what you say is probably a good reason why companies take advantage of the government. Not saying yours does but we've all heard the crazy military purchase stories.

Good, but I wish Google would have (and would continue to be) more serious about 508 accessibility. The accessibility issue has cost them numerous state contracts in California, though they did finally start producing VPATs this past year. If I were the government here, may be able to make an argument that Google hasn't fully vetted its products for 508 compliance, which is a requirement for winning most federal software/web contracts.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1857210

I work (part time) with the Dept of Interior. The reason for the Microsoft-centric requirements is due to all of the lawsuits against DoI. As far as I know, electronic "discovery" tools used by lawyers and law firms aren't compatible with Google's cloud, but are compatible with Microsoft's (and Lotus Notes - shudder). Perhaps there will be a few products handling Googles product in a year or 2.

The lawsuits against Interior have to do with Indian tribes being cheated out of royalties going back, oh, a hundred years or more. One book where this subject was touched upon (and gives an idea of the size of the discrepancies) is Sinister Pig. http://www.amazon.com/Sinister-Pig-Tony-Hillerman/dp/0060194... Pretty much any tribe with oil, gas, coal, uranium or any other economically valuable mineral is involved in sueing Interior. This means that just about every tribe is sueing Interior.

Employee orientation with Interior includes some explanation of these suits as well as what needs to be preserved.

"...just issue a spec that requires a hood ornament with three lines trisecting a circle, and see whichever car company meets the spec at the best price-- surprise!"

cited from here

http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/c84bp/how_realwor...

If you don't have a good enough reason to demand the ornament, you will still have to explain why you needed it in court.

Here in Brazil I have seen a couple RFPs shot down because they were tailored to a certain supplier (things like "nine internal bays for mass-storage devices" or "PowerPC 401-based on-board RAID subsystem"). In one instance, the guys with 10-bays and i960 CPUs on RAID cards were not happy and the poor sap who was ordered to write the spec had the distinguished annoyance of both explaining it to a judge and having to redo it, adding a year to the project.

I can't imagine you getting away with that.

Provide something better. I really mean it, there is no alternative which is qualitatively equivalent to MS exchange. Same for the office. Google has their cloud products, but I don't think that any government should have to store their data on googles servers.

The contract was for Microsoft's cloud products. Not locally hosted Exchange.

The suite of products in question includes, among other things, remotely hosted Exchange.

For which there are perfectly adequate alternatives that do not involve Microsoft -- e.g. Google Apps.

Anyone who thinks that Google Apps are a "perfectly adequate" alternative to Exchange has never worked at a company of over 100 users with different needs and desires.

> there is no alternative which is qualitatively equivalent to MS exchange

You say that as it was a bad thing. I would be very happy if I hadn't to accommodate most of my professional communications around the idiosyncrasies of Exchange and the combination of Outlook, Entourage, Mail/iCal and Evolution clients.

This is government work. The US government continues to award contracts to companies that consistently fail -- either massively over budget, extremely late, incomplete, non-functional, or (most often) some combination of all four.

Nice strategy. If a customer doesn't give your products fair consideration, sue them. There's no doubt Google has a very strong cloud product, one that's superior to Microsoft's in certain scenarios. But to start a lawsuit over this seems kind of extreme. Not the strategy of a "don't be evil" company.

This isn't a private company looking to make a software purchase. This is the United States Federal Government. As such, I would expect them to have to give fair consideration to other vendors and their respective technologies rather than defaulting to Microsoft.

I completely agree with your argument for giving fair consideration. But put this aside, customer have the rights to choose their desired platform right? And since this is for government, they should have valid reason with their choice.

Private businesses and individuals can do whatever they want with their money.

The government instead is paying using taxpayers money.

I think you'd be surprised how many contractors end up suing the government (or competing parties) in regards to a flubbed bid.

This happens a LOT. The Federal Acquisition Regulations are designed to prevent exactly the sort of thing that Google is suing for (e.g., write bid requirements to functionality, not to products) -- and it is violated all the time.

They government should be sued more often, probably, to keep from violating the rules it sets upon itself.

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