Content is to Google as OS is to Microsoft

I had a previous entry about how the rampant software priracy helped Microsoft dominate the OS and Office automation markets in the ’90s. It’s interesting that today media firms are accusing Google of taking advantage of “pirated” content. From WSJ [subscription required]:

A group of major media companies has accused Internet giant Google Inc. of benefiting from the sale of pirated movies and providing business support to two Web sites suspected of offering access to illegal film downloads, according to several people familiar with the matter.

So what’re the studios gonna do about it? What can they do about it?

they acknowledge that consumers want the convenience of downloads, and the companies don’t want to miss out on a potential business opportunity or try to block downloads completely

Holy %$^ – how many versions of Vista are really out there?

I know officially there are 12 versions (including the limited edition signature release and 64-bit versions) but has anyone counted OEM versions for sale?

Here is a Vista Home Premium OEM release on sale at Newegg which is different from the upgrade and full versions.

There is a huge price difference, but are the restrictions that equally big? Is the market adequately segmented for these fragmented offerings? Mind boggling. By contrast, there are two versions of Mac OS X: OS X and OS X server. Put that in an ad.