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> I used to care about that company for some reason That's the strangest part. I never found Yahoo useful for anything (except Douglas Crockford, but he could have been employed anywhere).
Why would it be ok for Yahoo and other big companies to use patents "only" to threaten small shops and keep the status quo?
Let them fight between eachother, let Yahoo sue Facebook sue Gooogle sue Microsoft sue Apple sue HTC sue Samsung sue Sony sue Oracle sue ... let everyone sue everyone else. Let the total war on patents begin. Let the big players burn a ton of money on pointless legal battles. And then, and only then, they might push for a patent reform which will level playing field for all players, including new ones.
TBH it would be a true douche move if we were in say 2006, but right now FB is worth almost ten times more than Yahoo, so who cares? they can either buy Yahoo or even sue it into oblivion. Is not that crazy to assume this may actually be a last-resort strategy to sell Yahoo once and for all. Most agree Yang dropped the ball when he refused MSFT's offer.
The reason for the timing is because of the IPO. Yahoo! is using this as a way to make Facebook desperate to settle, so that their pricing is higher during the IPO.
So: suggestions for a social photo archive service which is reliable enough to be the "master copy" of my pictures, and preferably has Flickr import ability?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't have to play this game. Once they dared to: start your hate machine.
It's a chicken-egg problem. The game will only stop once people stop playing it, but people won't stop playing it until the game stops. And you can be sure that companies once they have lots of patents will lobby mercilessly to keep the current "game" in place. Who wants to stop playing when they feel they are winning? Apart from some sudden massive outbreak of sanity, there is no way out.
Wait... Is he still talking about the facebook lawsuit?
I really don't like saying this, but here it goes: Don't hate the player, hate the game. We need real, substantive patent reform in this country.
Just remember though that right now the pharmaceutical companies are massively outspending the technology sector as far as lobbying Congress. (A Senator is a wonderful thing --- everyone should own one!)
As a Google employee I can contribute to Google NetPAC. I'm not sure what opportunities exist towards donations to organizations that directly lobby Congress. The EFF is an advocacy organization, which is a good start, but they are not a lobbying organization per se.
It's a horrible system and it's not a productive way to use money as far as society is concerned, but unfortunately, it's the way the game is structured, and if you don't play the game, you'll get run over by those who do....
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Absolutely. It's easy to bash at Yahoo, but we can't forget that while Facebook (and many other players, including Yahoo) are using one hand undermine the "intellectual property" of other companies, they're using their other hand to try and protect their own IP using the same laws. Take this absurd Facebook patent as an example >System and method for dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network…
> Why else would they file for patents if their intent wasn't to defend "their ideas." As the original article said, most SV web companies claim to file patents as a defensive measure - so if they get sued by someone else, they can hit back. Suing first is extremely bad form. > If we're calling out Yahoo's patents as junk, we should be doing the same for facebook and the rest I don't see anyone saying that Facebook's…
Well I hope he doesn't use any Apple products then. That would be pretty hypocritical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
for starters, in the comment section of the original post and besides, the onus of citation should be on you with your crazy broad assumption that Fred has placed 'immense pressure' on startups to generate patents.
I just looked at all of Fred's comments on that thread, and saw no such thing. Please don't lie just because you find the truth about startups and patents inconvenient.
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/yahoo-crosses-the-line.html#...
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/yahoo-crosses-the-line.html#...
more importantly, where is there even a single citation of Fred placing immense pressure on even a single startup to generate a patent?
You should retract your comment, since you made it all up.