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.