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 something other than: buy a way to tax hardware makers who choose to run a competitor's OS?
Sometimes patents are defensive.
The whole Google are victims thing is getting pretty tired.
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?
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.
I wonder if they'll decide to do a shakedown on Bing for using the patented PageRank method? Again, probably not.
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...
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.
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.
They never have before - it's not clear why you think they would now?
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.
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.
In this case it is pretty clear Microsoft can't compete fairly so they're beating everyone over the head with their legal department.