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Comment by podperson | Hacker News Reader

I hope you're right. But Google has certainly sold it to its Android partners as "we're going to use their patents to defend your crapware-ridden half-assed locked down handsets and then smother the hardware people with this wet pillow":

http://www.google.com/press/motorola/quotes/

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Wow, those quotes all sound the same... it's almost eerie.

We welcome today’s news, which demonstrates Google’s deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem.

We welcome the news of today‘s acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem.

I welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.

We welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.

Those quotes are from the heads of 4 major companies...

It's not just almost eerie. It really is, and makes me think of zombies walking. PR zombies.

Seriously, though, I imagine that there are pretty intense discussions taking place within a number of handset manufacturers right now about how to manage their risk:

* treat (but how? it's a Gulliver situation even for someone like Samsung)

* transfer (almost impossible to transfer the risks in this situation unless you join the MS camp)

* accept (and have your shareholders crucify you if you made the wrong call)

A very brave move from Google (in the Yes, Minister sense)

You don't actually think the CEOs said those things, do you? Google's PR people would have written to them saying "can we quote you as saying X?", and they would have written back saying either "sure, that sounds fine" or "no, use this quote instead: ...".

You might be right, though I would think that even a PR person would have tried to introduce some variability to make it sound believable.

I don't really know how these things typically work.

Paging Matt Cutts. Web Spam cleanup in Aisle 3. Paging Matt Cutts

The "See more results like this" SERP collapsed-grouping display is needed on that page.

I've long suspected there's some kind of madlibs for PR that all these companies use.

I, for one, welcome our new handset overlords...

I read the responses, and I felt exactly the same way. The news has been shared with the partners beforehand and all PR responses have been choreographed. I don't know what they would do exactly, though, since Android is the best mobile OS choice they have. Can't touch IOS. Windows Mobile sucks. Symbian is going away. Not an easy place to be.

And do you think the PR guys asked them for a quote? No they did not. They wrote the quote and then asked the company if they would 'approve' it. (sort of quote by inference)

I was exposed early on to this when a PR person wrote up a quote, attributed it to me, and then ran it through the PR department where I worked who 'signed off' on the release although no one actually asked me if I had made that quote. When I protested they said "Oh it sounded like something you would say, should we seek a retraction?" It was a hell of an introduction to this 'known technique' in the PR world. I told them that in the future they had to clear any quote attributed to me, through me, which they were happy to do.

So my speculation is that the PR guys wrote these quotes, asked the partner's PR firm to approve, and they did, because none of the CEOs/GMs whatever have that flag set in their PR department that says "check with me before you approve something with a quote from me in it."

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