Mumbai: Google Inc, the world''s largest internet search company, is pressing for an extension to the US justice department''s monitoring of Microsoft Corp''s business practices.

Google is now asking the federal judge to extend the government''s anti-trust oversight of Microsoft, specifically with regard to desktop search software. Microsoft had already agreed to modify Vista to allow rival desktop search engines, but Google says that this remedy will come too late — specifically, after (most of) the anti-trust agreement expires in November.

Google has, over the last year, complained to state and federal regulators that Microsoft''s `instant search'' programme, which helps Windows Vista users search their hard drives, slows down third-party desktop search programmes. Google also has said Microsoft makes it hard for PC users to choose alternatives to the built-in search, including Google''s own ''Free Google Desktop'' programme.

"Microsoft''s hardwiring of its own desktop search product into Windows Vista violates the final judgment" in the US government''s antitrust case against the software maker, Google said in a court filing.

Google''s claims were meant to show that Microsoft is not complying with the antitrust settlement, reached in 2002 after the US government concluded Microsoft used its Windows operating system to squash competition.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is now bound by a consent decree that requires it to help rivals build software that runs smoothly in Windows.

In a report published last week, the justice department and Microsoft detailed a compromise response to Google''s complaints. Windows Vista users will be able to set a non-Microsoft programme as the default desktop search engine.

Microsoft will also add a link to that alternate programme in the Windows start menu, but will not change the way Vista "instant search" works. The software maker said the changes would be available by the end of the year.

What makes this political manoeuvre interesting is that Google went over the heads of the department of justice and US state regulators, who had found Microsoft''s compromise acceptable, to appeal directly to the federal judge overseeing the anti-trust settlement, Scientific American reported.