In a sign of how intense the competition between Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is, Google sued the U.S. government in October, alleging that the Department of the Interior’s hunt for a new contractor was an ‘unfair’ competition in which only Microsoft was seriously considered. Now, Google has won the first round in that lawsuit, as a judge for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued an injunction that will prevent the Department of the Interior from moving ahead with the Microsoft deal, which is worth as much as $59 million, until the case is resolved.
Google also filed an amended complaint on Dec. 30 that challenges additional business deals that the Department of the Interior has made, including modifications it has made to an existing contract between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Dell Marketing to migrate its e-mail systems to Microsoft Exchange.
The court found that it won’t be a big deal for Department to wait before it moves ahead with the Microsoft deal, since it has been on the hunt for a unified messaging and email system since 2007 already. And if it moves ahead with implementing Microsoft’s system, Google would suffer because the Department of the Interior could be locked in to a Microsoft system that would even hurt Google in future competitions.
This order doesn’t rule on the entire case, but it does indicate that the judge at least thinks Google has a decent shot at winning. In order to issue a preliminary injunction in this type of case, the judge has to find that the party asking for the injunction has at least some “likelihood of success on the merits.”
» Read – Judge’s Order Issuing Preliminary Injunction in Google v. U.S. [PDF]
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