

Apple To Make Billions On Google's Android - rmah
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/11/04/apple-to-make-billions-on-googles-android/

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aristidb
A number of things:

1\. I'm pretty sure Google already makes money for Android, through
advertising and such.

2\. If the Motorola acquisition goes through, Apple may not be able to extract
much in terms of royalties, given that it almost certainly infringes on some
of those patents (unknowingly, of course).

3\. Microsoft extracts money from Android, right now, but it has a huge number
of patents.

4\. Listing a dozen patents is somewhat irrelevant when we're talking about
these companies acquiring huge patent portfolios.

Also, abolish patents.

~~~
roc
Expanding on point 1: The question isn't even "Does Google make money from
Android." The question is: "What does Google make in a world with Android vs
what does Google make in a world without Android?"

The play with Android is not unlike Chrome: they're making $0 _directly_ from
Chrome, but having Chrome has pushed their interests in the browser space in a
way that has helped their bottom line. (faster javascript processing leading
to more use/more ads within their core products).

Without Android, mobile was hurtling toward a paid-app space with not a lot of
arbitrary web usage and thus not a lot of ads, and of those ads that remained,
the phone makers and/or networks could force terms or lock Google out on a
whim.

In short, Google as an advertiser has no choice but to spend big to ensure
that not only does Apple not win, but that the architecture of authoritative
apps does not win.

(In Android's lackluster paid-app market I see the same self-sabotage-in-
deference-to-the-cash-cow that we see in Microsoft projects that threaten
Office/Windows.)

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Kylekramer
TL;DR: I'm an expert/patent troll myself, Apple has a couple patents and here
is the TL;DR version of them, ergo Apple will make billions.

Of course, this article ignores exactly how Android violates these patents.
And that Google and its partners aren't exactly entering the ring without any
patents themselves. And more importantly, the fact that Apple seems very
uninterested in making billions off Android. If they did, they would be acting
like Microsoft. Not to mention the Jobs decree was to spend all of Apple's
money destroying Android, not padding its coffers. There is a fairly large
disconnect here.

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mladenkovacevic
Link-baiting headlines like this are really devaluing the entire journalistic
process.

This feels like an article written by a hyperactive high-schooler with a fast-
approaching deadline for his independent writing assignment. He first forms
some vague but polarizing argument by stringing together a few loaded
sentences to compensate for lack of real research and insight. Then it
basically proceeds to just list the patents Apple will (or already has) used
to litigate Android OEMs...

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phamilton
"US 7,657, 849 Apple 2011 Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an
unlock image"

The details of the patent mention a predetermined gesture.

Moving from left to right is a predetermined gesture.

Is moving a ring from one area of the screen to another a predetermined
gesture? If the final location of the ring is not consistent, could it be
called a gesture? Is pushing a button a gesture?

It's things like that that make patents so questionable.

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playhard
Apple is not Microsoft

