BEIJING, June 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The top antitrust official at the U.S. Justice Department last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google against Microsoft, reported the New York Times on Sunday.

    State officials told the newspaper that a memo by Thomas Barnett, an assistant attorney general, rejected the Google complaint, repeating legal arguments made by Microsoft.

    Barnett's memo dismissing Google's claims, sent to state attorneys general around the nation, alarmed many of them, with some state officials saying they believed Google's complaint had merit.

    The action demonstrates that nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct.

    According to the Times, the complaint alleged that the Windows Vista search feature slows down Google's competing Google Desktop Search (GDS) program, discouraging consumers from using its search program.

    Google complained to federal and state prosecutors, claiming that Microsoft was violating the 2002 antitrust settlement against the company, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit consumer choice.

    The complaint has not been made public by Google or the judge overseeing the Microsoft consent decree, said Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington.

    It is expected to be discussed at a hearing on the decree in front of Judge Kollar-Kotelly this month.

    Bradford L. Smith, the general counsel at Microsoft, told the Times that the company was unaware of the memo. He said that Microsoft had not violated the consent decree and that it had already made modifications to Vista in response to concerns raised by Google and other companies.

    He said that the new operating system was carefully designed to work well with rival software products and that an independent technical committee that works for the Justice Department and the states had spent years examining Vista for possible anticompetitive problems before it went on sale.

    Microsoft, Google and the Justice Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Agencies)