Google Sues U.S. Over Unfair Cloud Contract

The Department of the Interiors request for proposals to provide the agency with e-mail service is written to exclude Google, the company claims.

Google and one of its cloud service resellers, Onix Networks, filed a lawsuit on Friday against the U.S. government for contract requirements that make the companies unable to compete against Microsoft in a bid for government business.
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is seeking a hosted e-mail and collaboration solution to serve its 88,000 users. The contract is estimated to be worth $59 million over five years.
Google wants to compete for the government contract but the Request for Quotations (RFQ) specified that only the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite-Federal (BPOS-Federal) could be proposed.
Google claims that a Limited Source Justification directive issued by the agencys director of the Office of Acquisition and Property Management on August 30, 2010, represents single-source procurement that is arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of direction, and otherwise contrary to law.
This the second time in recent months that Google has allegedly run into this problem. The company
made similar claims
informally following the State of Californias decision to award a hosted e-mail contract to Microsoft last month.
California officials denied Googles claims that the states process was unfair.
Googles lawsuit against the federal government describes a courtship with DOI officials that began in June, 2009, during which, the company alleges, it received tips that Microsofts success in the bidding process was pre-ordained.
Google says that despite initial contact with the agency which led the company to believe that it could meet the DOIs requirements, things changed following a meeting in April, 2010. The agencys CTO, William Corrington, allegedly told Google representatives that a path forward had already been chosen for the DOI messaging solution and there would be no opportunity for Google to compete because its product was not compliant with DOIs security requirements.
Google says that the DOI declined to provide those security requirements or meet with company representatives to discuss Google Apps security.
When Google representatives finally met with DOI officials in June, 2010, to clarify the capabilities of the companys products, Google says that it received mixed messages about the status of the DOIs contract. The company says it confronted agency officials about rumors that Microsofts BPOS had already been selected and that DOI officials had responded that those rumors were unfounded.
Yet in August, 2010, Google contacted DOI officials about those assurances and presented a DOI screenshot, which indicated that a pilot project to migrate 5,000 DOI users to the Microsoft platform had been underway for months.
In its complaint, Google takes issue with the DOIs assumption that Microsoft BPOS is the only solution that can meet its requirements. It notes that Microsoft topped a list of 12 major software security providers for the number of security vulnerabilities and software patches needed to plug security holes and that Google was the only provider on the list with no zero-day disclosures.
Google also cites a four-day BPOS-Standard outage in January, 2010, to suggest that BPOS-Federal might not meet the DOIs uptime requirements.
Neither Google nor Microsoft responded immediately to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

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Google Sues U.S. Over Unfair Cloud Contract