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The problem with making this sound like it's purely a defensive move is that if tomorrow the government decides they agree and would like to massively reform the software patent process would Google really be able to support that.

They just spent 1 billion acquiring patents that they would then turn around and support reform that invalidates most of them. I call BS on that!

No company is going to throw away a billion dollars for the greater good!

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Or perhaps they realise, even with a new patent arsenal, it's still overall poor for their business? They probably also realise that any patent reform isn't going to happen very quickly, and this patent acquisition isn't going to be "thrown away".

In short term yes, but if we got rid of patents then Google wouldn't have to spend billion dollars on patents each year. I don't think Google is so short-sighted.

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