There have been big ructions in the usually sedate world of international technical standards this past week, stirred by news of a big victory by Microsoft and OOXML.

OOXML (Office Open XML) is Microsoft’s standard for documents and underpins everything created by users of its widely adopted Word software. The company has been pushing for OOXML to be ratified as a standard by the International Organisation for Standardising (ISO) which is responsible for keeping such things consistent around the world.

Last week the ISO released its ruling that OOXML would indeed become a ratified standard, joining the likes of HTML and PDF. Naturally Microsoft is more than a little pleased at the decision as it will allow large organisations and governments to continue using Word, safe in the knowledge that their documents are based on an approved format.

However there’s always another side to such things, and in this case it’s been occupied by organisations who see the Microsoft push as an evil attempt to further its world domination. They argue that OOXML is a proprietary standard and, as such, not suitable for ratification by the ISO.

The anti-Microsoft crowd say the company has been too pushy in getting its standard through the certification process. This, they say, stymied debate and resulted in a flawed decision.

They’ve obviously been pleading their case to someone who listens because the European Commission’s antitrust regulatory body has already sent query letters to several European countries to ask about the approval process. The investigation could take some time.

What concerns them the most is that the ISO approval will almost certainly allow OOXML to overtake OpenDocument and become the preferred global format for documents.

But so what if it does? Just because the standard is a creation of Microsoft doesn’t make it technically inferior to an open source rival. Millions of people around the world create documents based on OOXML every day. That’s not going to change.

What does change is that the organisations they work for can be confident those documents will survive into the future. If they were to use a non-ratified standard, there’s nothing to say that documents created now may become unreadable by future versions of software applications.

A knee-jerk reaction by open source apostles is predicable, but doesn’t help to move the world forward. Let’s face the fact that Microsoft has a dominant position when it comes to document creation software. You might not like it, but it’s not about to change anytime soon.

So, ratifying the standard on which those documents are created makes commercial sense. Let’s put the sport of Microsoft bashing to one side for the moment and move on.

In the past few weeks, Google has quietly introduced a new search feature designed to make life easier for users. Trouble is, it’s going to get advertisers hopping mad.

Dubbed ‘search within a search’, it allows users to drill down into web sites to find information without actually leaving Google’s search page. While this might sound very convenient, it has a sting in its tail.

For example, a Google search for Qantas will bring up the company’s home page at the top of the listing. But below this is a new search box labelled ‘Search qantas.com.au’ . If you type into this box ‘flights to London’ a list of relevant references within the Qantas site is displayed. So far, so good.

But at the same time, on the right side of the screen, a list of Google ads appears – many of which are for Qantas competitors. A quick test of this search earlier today generated ads for Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines.

If I was Qantas I would not be happy. Rather than having a potential customer who actually typed my company name into a search engine taken directly to my site, I’ve suddenly got the names of my biggest rivals on their screen.

Retailers and service companies invest a lot of time and effort into optimising their web sites for Google searches, knowing that being at the top of returned search lists can make a huge difference to the volume of traffic they receive. Anything that gets in the way of this process is not going to fill them with glee.

Google will have to think long and hard about this new feature, especially in light of its “Don’t be evil” unofficial company motto. Trying to keep the eyes of web searchers for longer is one thing, but pitting advertisers against each other is very different.

All this has coincided with the release of a US report showing the number of people clicking on Google-generated internet ads has declined for the past three months in a row.

I’m not suggesting the two are connected, or that this marks the beginning of the end for the online powerhouse. It’s probably got a lot more to do with a softening in the US economy.

What it does show, however, is that the company needs to be constantly refining its operations and looking for new opportunities to generate revenues.

That’s fine. But doing this through a ‘search within a search’ function is probably not the best way to go about it.

I faced a choice this Easter weekend. Should I spend time upgrading my Vista-based notebook to Service Pack 1, or relax and eat chocolate eggs. It wasn’t a difficult decision.

A quick scan of some major tech web sites and blogs was enough to convince me to take the planned upgrade off my “to do” list for at least the next couple of months. Reports of everything from annoying driver problems to blue screens of death made the risks just not worth any potential benefit.

At first I was a little annoyed as I had been looking forward to SP1 for some time, hoping it would fix some 'undocumented habits' that my primary work computer has had since I purchased it last year. I won’t bore you with the details, but they’ve included sluggish performance, an occasional inability to wake from sleep, and a propensity to freeze applications - much the same kinds of things that have been plaguing many Vista users around the world.

But then (probably after the second chocolate egg) the annoyance was replaced with a feeling of bewilderment. How can a company with the resources of Microsoft get an operating system so wrong? With massive development budgets, thousands of programmers and years to do it, how can a company deliver a product that is so comprehensively underwhelming?

A little later (halfway through the fifth egg, from memory) I recalled the writings of a range of commentators that were published when Vista was first launched. They had come to the conclusion that the reason Vista brought with it so many problems was that it was trying to do too much.

Rather than focusing on developing a lean operating system that is great at running a computer, Microsoft was intent on creating a massive chunk of software that did everything from photo editing to communications, security and search.

Instead of trying to fix this bloated monster, Microsoft needs to get back to the basics – creating an OS that is just an OS. Sure, offer other features as add-ons, but just make sure the underlying fundaments do the important tasks required of them. Not too much to ask, surely.

Will Microsoft ever do this? We can only hope. Meanwhile, I’m off to find another egg.

Ever since the first database hummed into existence in the early days of mainframe computers, people have voiced concern about who might have access to the information it contained.

Gradually, as more of our personal and professional lives have moved into the digital realm, the cries from privacy advocates have grown louder. People have a right, they argue, to effective safeguards that protect their personal details. As individuals, we should be able to decide who has access to our information and on what terms.

It’s a nice concept, but it’s redundant. Personal privacy has gone the way of the $50 barrel of oil and affordable housing – it’s no more than a swiftly fading memory.

The key factor at work here is the rapidly growing volume of digital information that exists in the world. With everything from banking and shopping to travel bookings and entertainment now being handled online, the amount of personal information stored in computer systems has exploded.

Add to this the rising tide of user-generated content and the volumes become even greater. Every email or SMS you send and phone call you make leaves a digital trail somewhere.

Add to this all the recordings of your movements captured by surveillance cameras, in digital photos and on social networks and the total is mind blowing. If someone wants to find out about you, it’s not that difficult a task anymore.

An interesting report was released last week that summed up this very problem. Conducted by research company IDC in conjunction with storage specialist EMC, the report estimates there is now some 281 billion gigabytes (that’s 281 exabytes) of information in the world.

With a compound annual growth rate of around 60 per cent, this head-spinning volume is forecast to increase to 1.8 zettabytes (that’s 1800 exabytes) by 2011.

IDC talks about the concept of a ‘digital shadow’. This shadow represents the information that’s generated about you rather than by you. The report says the size of a person’s digital shadow is now larger than the volume of information they’ve created themselves.

The report points out the growing importance of organisations having clear guidelines and processes in place to protect the vast volumes of information they store. This is sound advice.

But let’s be realistic, with these kinds of data volumes, any sort of processes are going to have holes. There’s simply no way all your personal details can be kept under a digital lock and key all the time. This is especially true for the growing digital shadow.

So what’s the answer? Learn to live with it. We must accept that, as much as we would like to keep our digital lives to ourselves, it’s not going to happen.

Privacy as we once knew it is over. Get used to living in a digital goldfish bowl.

Hardly a day goes by without another IT company telling us how green it has become. To be honest, it’s getting a little tedious.

Yes, I know climate change is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) challenges facing the planet, but the cynic in me sees a very large bandwagon with a lot of people jumping on.

Green? You bet we are!

There was a classic example during the past week when everyone’s favourite motivational speaker, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, took to the stage at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany.

Ballmer captured the attention of the big crowd by claiming that Microsoft is now an environmental convert, studiously looking for ways it can help users of technology reduce their power consumption.

As evidence of this new planet-loving attitude he claimed that Windows Vista was a more power efficient operating system than its predecessor, Windows XP. To back this up he pointed to recent research conducted by UK-based PC Pro Labs that found a company with 200 PCs running Vista produced 45 tons less carbon per year than a similar company running Windows XP.

Excuse me? How on earth can the most processor-hungry OS ever developed by the Redmond giant be green? Anyone noticed how hot the average Vista PC gets? Perhaps they factored in the frustration factor. It runs so slowly that people end up turning their machines off and taking the dog for a walk instead.

Meanwhile another IT company bitten by the green bug is Sun Microsystems which has been building what it calls eco-friendly data centres in the US and plans to roll them out around the world. Rival HP is following a similar path, planning to reduce its 85 global data centres into just six. The company estimates such consolidation will save it millions of dollars in operating costs while also reducing its carbon footprint.

These kinds of initiatives make a lot of sense. Consolidation, helped by technologies such as virtualisation, will be a recurring theme throughout the business world for at least the next few years. Companies following this path can legitimately claim to be helping the planet.

Other recent examples are monitor manufacturers releasing green monitors, networking equipment manufacturers offering green switches and telecoms companies such as Telstra spruiking the planet-saving benefits of their services.

My point is this: Just because an IT company declares itself ‘green’ doesn’t mean you should drag out the cheque book and start spending. You can expect virtually every technology company to start spruiking its eco-credentials during the coming months, if it hasn’t started already.

Sure, listen to what they’ve got to say and if it makes sense, perhaps they’re worth a closer look. But just because a company says their offerings are green doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually help the future of the planet. The bottom line still rules.

As with everything in the world of technology, the truth lies behind the hype. Green ain't necessarily green.