

Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip? - AndrewDucker
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/15/google_motorola_the_poker_chip_that_cant_be_redeemed/

======
aikinai
"Google didn't take IP seriously, bidding silly numbers (such as pi billion
dollars) for the Nortel patents."

Why does everyone keep rehashing this statement that was asinine the first
time? How do the specific digits of their bids say anything about Google's
stance towards IP? Pi billion is over 141 million more serious of a bid than
the 3 billion that I guess would have made everyone more comfortable.

~~~
schraeds
“Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one of the
sources said. “It became clear that they were bidding with the distance
between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical
constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,” the source said,
adding the bid was $3.14159 billion. “Either they were supremely confident or
they were bored.”

Google thought they were playing a game, lost, and has been crying about it
ever since.

~~~
monochromatic
> bidding with numbers that were not even numbers

What does this even mean?

~~~
fhars
That the numbers were not small multiples of large powers of ten.

~~~
zakovyrya
I heard that's illegal in seven states.

------
palebluedot
While the register portrays Google's moves as blundering, Dan Lyon's take is
the exact opposite. I suspect it may be a while before we know which is true,
although I want to lean towards Dan's view:

[http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2011/08/15/suck-on-it-
applesoft...](http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2011/08/15/suck-on-it-applesoft/)

~~~
starwed
I've never once read a register article and felt enlightened -- I've mentally
compartmentalized them as a place to ignore.

Did I get the wrong impression, and they can in fact be a useful source of new
& commentary?

------
jobu
Hindsight is 20/20, but Google would have been a lot better off purchasing Sun
and all of its patents than Motorola at a $5 billion premium.

~~~
vimes
I don't think buying Sun would have protected Android from
Apple/Microsoft/Nokia/etc., just as buying Motorola won't protect it from
Oracle. If anything, buying both may have made sense.

------
extension
Now that Google has sunk $12.5B into the patent system, I fear the fight
against software patents has lost it's most powerful ally.

~~~
joebadmo
I think it's more the case that Google has to fight both sides of this:
acquire patents for defense in the short term, lobby congress for patent
reform in the long term.

I think long long-term, the friction of the patent system goes against
Google's incentives. Google isn't a hardware company (even though they just
bought one). They sell search ads, and their complements are hardware,
software, everything between consumers and search ads. If patents in general
are a tax on innovation, that's bad for Google.

------
ChuckMcM
I fear the essence of this story is true, that Google doesn't have a coherent
strategy with regard to this fight, and its certainly out of their comfort
zone, so this does feel more like someone flailing.

That being said, Google has a really deep pool of expertise in a lot of areas
in house and if they can come up with a reasonable way to surface that
expertise I would expect them to come up with a solid response.

~~~
brudgers
The more I learn about Android and the way in which Google pursued mobile, the
more I believe that Google never had a long term strategy, merely tactics
aimed at being the first iPhone competitor - or rather they had a strategy to
provide mobile services but the iPhone made their interface obsolete.

Their decisions regarding Android appear to have been made based on a
corporate culture oriented toward trade secrets over patents, and their
assumptions regarding IP appear to have been biased by that corporate culture
- i.e. there's some viability to a clean room approach to copyright and trade
secrets, there is not one for patents.

Google's "damn the torpedoes approach" got them into the marketplace quickly,
but the mines are all still in the water and so is their fleet.

------
mfceo
first of all the nokia payment was not a one-off deal, as apple will continue
paying royalties to nokia each fiscal year, for as long as they use the
patents. clearly this reporter doesnt know what the facts are.

------
Funnnny
FTFA: "Android is a copycat platform. The APIs copy Java, and the UI copies
Apple's iPhone." too true to read!

~~~
recoiledsnake
El Reg should've thrown in something about '... and the kernel from Linux' in
there as well, to complete the troll.

~~~
tiles
Seriously.

Google culturally is very pro-Java, and decided to bring that to their new
mobile platform, without the legacy baggage of J2ME. It was an engineering
decision as much as it was against licensing Sun IP, maybe in light of how
poorly J2ME ever did as a development platform.

Android was in development since 2005 and the major post-iPhone change that
happened was a larger screen and virtual keyboard, which is what every modern
phone has.

There are companies which have blazed trails and Google has not blazed many
with its products; but they bring something equally as important to customers
as innovation: competition and choice.

