Some people like to go through their email by first sorting based on recipient, subject, or some other criteria -- clicking the column header in Microsoft Outlook, for example, to quickly move or delete groups of similar messages. But is sorting really necessary when people can just search their email by keyword?

The state of California says it is, and it's one of the examples reportedly cited by Google as evidence that the bidding process for the state's new email contract was unfairly skewed toward Microsoft and its partners. Gmail doesn't allow for sorting, relying instead on searching, but the state insisted on the ability to sort.

That's one of the more interesting tidbits in today's recommended reading -- a post from Friday afternoon by Sam Diaz of ZDNet's Between the Lines blog, adding extra context and reporting to a Los Angeles Times piece from earlier in the day: Google accuses California of rigging bidding process for e-mail contract.

To be clear, the sorting vs. searching requirement is just one example, but it's a good one because most of us can relate to it and weigh the relative merits based on our own usage. Diaz quotes a document in which Google (based in California) asked the state to change the requirement to better suit its own email capabilities.

The ability to sort tends to be more effective when users are in an exploratory mode, e.g. they don’t know what they’re looking for. In the context of email, however, users typically know what they’re looking for. Search capability, on the other hand, is more effective at locating known information. Additionally, search has the added benefit of allowing users to narrow queries to pinpoint subsets of information. Email users are influenced by internet search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo and tend to prefer this method of find-ability due to its efficacy, pervasiveness and simplicity.

It's tempting to view this as a clash between client software (Outlook) and cloud computing (Gmail), and in some ways it is, but keep in mind that Microsoft's Outlook Web Access has long included the ability to sort by column.

In that way, this is more about the Google Way vs. the Microsoft Way.

The L.A. Times quotes Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler saying that the state probably wrote the requirements "in a way that supported the way they were used to working." He added, "When any new innovative technology shows up, the old guard is looking at it and scratching their heads."

Google ultimately chose not to bid, according to the reports.