Microsoft’s Android Plan: Evil Genius Or Just Evil? | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft’s Android Plan: Evil Genius Or Just Evil?

techcrunch.com

28 pointsdesaiguddu23 comments

The whole premise of the article is that the only acceptable reason for Microsoft to bid on the patents was out of fear that their existing licensing agreements would be invalidated. With thousands of patents in the portfolio, and a limited number of them licensed by Microsoft, that premise seems to need a bit of justification - something which the article lacks.

Furthermore, where is the explanation for Apple's participation? Is it also evil? What about Intel's failed bid? Evil too? RIM? Consistent attribution of the motives applied to Microsoft would have all Google's competitors as evil doers.

Finally, the article goes on to imply that the Nortel portfolio is somehow key to Microsoft's patent licensing program around Android which does not appear to be the case because those agreements are based on Microsoft's existing patent portfolio. (None of which is intended to argue for the merits of patent licensing.)

>Consistent attribution of the motives applied to Microsoft would have all the competitors as evil doers.

Fixed that. You can apply the same reasoning to every single company that made a bid for the pool, including Google. They shouldn't be singled out as the lone "non-evil" party here.

Google was most likely licensing some of the 4G tech from Nortel as well. Getting the patents in their pool, even if Google wouldn't use the patents offensively, would save them a boatload of cash.

Of course Google shouldn't be singled out, they're just like any other company only more so. And of course there was no substantial evidence in the article that Google would refrain from using the patents offensively had they acquired them.

In the context of the article Google's motives for bidding were attributed to nobility of purpose, a disinterest in the offensive use of patents and purity of heart - o.k. maybe not purity of heart.

Neither evil, nor genius, just business.

And let's not pretend that Google were trying to do any different. They didn't bid $3 billion with Intel for shits and giggles, they did it for exactly the same reasons Apple, Microsoft et al did they just lost.

> let's not pretend that Google were trying to do any different.

Let's not pretend that Google were trying to do something other than: buy a way to tax hardware makers who choose to run a competitor's OS?

Sometimes patents are defensive.

So they wouldn't have attempted to get patent fees out of Apple, RIM and anyone making Windows Phone devices? They'd have just spent $3bn on the patents to stop anyone else having them.

The whole Google are victims thing is getting pretty tired.

> So they wouldn't have attempted to get patent fees out of Apple, RIM and anyone making Windows Phone devices?

I believe that's what I implied.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22google+sues%22+patent

Do you have some reason to think otherwise apart from that it would be bad business sense in your opinion?

From the first page of results on the comparative Google search (ironically): Google Sues Oregon Company Over Patents for Online Traffic Maps: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

In other legal protection (that is non-patent) they've sued everyone from the US Government (over their supposed favouring of Microsoft), Microsoft over the default search engine in IE 7, Froogle over trademark infringement as well as a whole bunch of counter suits.

If I go past the first five pages (which are dominated by Lodsys and Oracle limiting the space for other stories) who knows what else but I really don't have time.

Google are a big company, they have legal muscle and use it, please don't kid yourself it's otherwise.

There's nothing ironic about it. It's on the first page of Bing too. If you read the first line of what you linked to, you'll see that it has nothing to do with Google enforcing its patent rights.

I wonder if they'll decide to do a shakedown on Bing for using the patented PageRank method? Again, probably not.

Bing doesn't use PageRank.

Last time they talked about it[1], it used a neural network that appeared to be have ended up with a system similar to Kleinberg's Hubs and Authorities algorithm[2].

Your point is valid though.

[1] Back in the MSN Search days: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/MSN-Optimization-Help/Search-Engi...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HITS_algorithm

Did you read that first link?

Google said it wants a court ruling that its Google Maps feature doesn’t use inventions patented by closely held Traffic Information LLC. It’s also challenging the validity of the patents.

They aren't using patents - they are asking for a patent that can be used to attack them to be invalidated.

Sorry, my bad.

But the reality is that they do use legal muscle where it works and there have been other companies who've stated that they only bought patents for defensive purposes who soon shifted. I honestly can't see Google holding that line - you may disagree but only time will tell who is right.

I'd also suggest that Google's lack of use of patents in this way so far is likely as much down to the fact that they have a notoriously weak patent portfolio (estimated to be one twenty fifth the size of Microsoft's - largely a function of age rather than intent). Google suing another large company would be taking a knife to a gun fight.

Interestingly, at least on Win7 & IE8 it is impossible to set Google as your default search. All you can do it set it up as an "Accelerator", but that doesn't make it work with the search box. The search box appears to specifically ban Google.

So they wouldn't have attempted to get patent fees out of Apple, RIM and anyone making Windows Phone devices? They'd have just spent $3bn on the patents to stop anyone else having them.

They never have before - it's not clear why you think they would now?

It is an anti-competitive business practice even if it is strictly legal. I don't care who's doing it.

In this case it is pretty clear Microsoft can't compete fairly so they're beating everyone over the head with their legal department.

Google is not Mother Theresa, but it's pretty obviously often driven by questions that are not in terms of monetary profit. Wall Street hates them for that.

Even when they are doing things like open sourcing a video codec to try to inspire competition, I bet profit is still in their minds somewhere.

One side has an extensive, recent track record of offensive IP suits. The other does not. There's a difference between buying a gun to protect yourself in your own home and taking a Glock around the block for a drive-by.

I doubt Google will sue Apple for ripping half of the new iOS 5 features from Android but they'd be within their rights to do so.

> they did it for exactly the same reasons Apple, Microsoft et al did

Given their track record, I highly doubt that. Rather, it looks like they tried to buy the patent portfolio so their competitors wouldn't try to use it against them.

What would be an example of a Nortel patent that applies to Android? Just because they have 6000 patents doesn't mean they are useful? Anybody could get 6000 nonsense patents with enough money.

In fact I just wonder, has anybody ever tried to DoS the patent office? If one application costs 10000$, one billion dollars would buy you one million potential patents. Something like the "academic paper generator" could be used.

The problem is even if those patents aren't relevant, legally establishing that fact is expensive and risky. With MS already shaking down handset makers for royalties there are important, near-term consequences of that kind of uncertainty.

The patent office is already essentially under a DoS. The patent backlog is between 3-5 years.

Biggest OEM example of why this does not work:

In the US we have two big examples:

1. CDAMA OEMs as they pay a patent fee to Qualcomm. 2. The OEM Apple uses for GSM handsets as they pay a patent fee to Nokia via Apple. Did that OEM suddenly stop making iphones after Nokia won the case?

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