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Comment by gibwell | Hacker News Reader

Because doing so would be shooting ourselves in the foot.

All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system. Google and Samsung have tried to control the whole industry through assertion of FRAND patents.

Also, you do realize that you are calling for a total monopoly on the entire industry to placed into the hands of Google?

I can't think of anything more destructive.

Note: I totally agree with you that the patent system is broken, and should be drastically changed to prevent this kind of behavior, but 'punishing' one company is just playing to the PR goals of their competitors.

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I already boycott all Apple products, after using only Macs for years.

Google doesn't seem to do any rent-seeking (as MS) nor does it try to lock down its platform to prevent any competition whatsoever (as Apple). FRAND is a shitty situation, but I think it's fair to claim even with that, Google is a much less threat to freedom than Apple or MS.

Just don't count on them to provide privacy as well.

I'm hoping for Mozilla to become a major player in phones; they seem fairly dedicated to both freedom and privacy.

> Google doesn't seem to do any rent-seeking (as MS) nor does it try to lock down its platform to prevent any competition whatsoever (as Apple). FRAND is a shitty situation, but I think it's fair to claim even with that, Google is a much less threat to freedom than Apple or MS.

I take it you don't advertise with Google? Google is just like any other company - they want to increase margins on their main revenue streams, and commoditize other areas so other large companies that gain revenue in those spaces are so weak they can't challenge Google.

For a long time, Google was not rent-seeking on their advertising platform, and gained a lot of cred. Then they bought double-click and it's been downhill from there. Google knows they're the biggest/only game in town and their prices (on their main revenue stream) reflect it.

> Just don't count on them to provide privacy as well.

On the bright side, Google won't go thermonuclear on you if you choose a Google-free mod. The Cyanogenmod guys conveniently provide instructions to install "google packs" if you choose to do so. I will not do business with companies that are into thermonuclear war.

The first and last Apple product I used was an iPod, years ago. Having to convert my music and videos to specific formats made the iPod lose its luster.

I disagree with you. Me boycotting Apple would not hand the market over to its competitors. Nor would an HN-wide boycott. But as they see the tide rising against them, perhaps we'd start to see changes in attitude. Also, it would incentivize competitors to differentiate from Apple in their bad behavior to try to multiply the trend.

The strategy of targeting the big players in an industry has worked time and time again. We've seen it work with GM, McDonalds, and most recently, Walmart.

I'm not saying anyone else in the industry is an angel. Just maybe it's time to start letting people know that we care enough to weigh corporate behavior pretty heavily in the mix with product specs in making our purchasing decisions.

I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that a boycott of Apple would do anything to cause Samsung to improve their behavior in any way. Most likely they would conclude that their general PR campaign to tarnish Apple was successful and be encouraged to turn it up further.

All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system.

Some of the players are more equal than others.

Google and Samsung are just fighting back against Apple.

There may be an element of truth to that but Google/Motorola and Samsung are fighting extremely dirty by using FRAND committed standards essential patents.

It can easily be seen that a large amount of [inspiration/copying/ripping off - choose your adjective depending on viewpoint] was done of the original iPhone. There are a reasonable range of views as to whether Apple should have had the right to bring any action about that but they were clearly angered and used the available laws to try to prevent it (which due largely to the slow movement of the legal system they have largely failed to do). I can see a range of valid views on the proper protection from copying of products and I don't believe it is possible to prove one better than others (although some might be obviously bad). I don't see anything evil in one mega-corp using the legal system to try to stop another mega-corp from copying it.

From Samsung's point of view if getting their current share in smartphones costs them a couple of billion dollars in damages that would be a good deal for them.

The patent law is a mess. I would prefer patents MUCH harder to obtain but that could be normally assumed valid once granted and with a legal system able to bring injuctions fast enough to get infringing models removed before they are obselete/replaced.

I general yes, but not in Motorola case. Google inherited that and could drop that patent aggressive stance from Motorola, but they didn't.

Surely you don't expect that to be taken seriously. Samsung is not some innocent well-meaning bystander in this. Nor is Google.

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