Well, it is lawful - just like Google's tax evasion.
Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
261–270 of 554 posts
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
RIM is a co-owner of Rockstar.
Ha. Didn't catch that! I wonder what percentage. Google could get some percentage of any potential judgement against themselves by buying RIM. It's like the M&A version of an option spread play.
I suspect all parties to the Rockstar trove have equal rights to the patents (and unequal royalties). Buying RIM would make the lawsuit null and void, unless RIM agreed that their rights can't be assigned (eg to Google) upon purchase etc.
Anyone have more knowledge on Rockstar and know how this would all work?
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google doesn't have >80% of the market. Android has >80% of the market. Google does not control Android. Yes, Google provides a lot of services for Android users, but Android works fine without Google services. Everybody is so quick to forget about "Android fragmentation," but fragmentation is a clear indicator of Google's lack of control over Android.
You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience. In reality almost everyone nicely complies with google's compatibility definition, constraining how far they can fork android, just in order to get access to google's closed source apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Google%20Inc... Only amazon has managed to m…
Depends where you live, i'm pretty sure Google's Chinese services are pretty dire compared to the native alternatives.
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#264It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…
This may be true, but let's not get fooled into thinking that because "they" are the enemy, Google must be our friend. Google is playing a very dubious game here, and it has nothing to do with being on "our" side of the patent issue. They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents. All through this, they've b…
That is a blatant lie. The Google blog post from the time is available here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...
Google is explicit about why they wanted the patents, and why joining the consortium would not further that goal.
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#265Anytime I see the latest "outrage" on HN, I laugh and remember us, citizens of my country that want to protest as long as they are not required to personally sacrifice too much. Most of these companies depend on you hackers (I do not write code) to be successful. If you decide to pull your apps from the app store, stop buying their products and write a post telling everyone why you made the move, they will be hurt. E…
> Of course, Facebook will one day eliminate all privacy settings, or Google will put ads in our inbox and there will be outrage again. As I was explaining in another comment, if you or other people or other companies don't like something, they can always build something better. If that something is good and provides more value to some people than the popular alternative, then it will take off. That's how the free ma…
> All the freedoms and luxuries you enjoy today come either from technological disruption, or from people that were outraged and that decided to do something about it.
"Decided to do something about it"
I am against "outrage" for outrage sake. If you are outraged but not willing to do anything about it, then it is worse than ambivalence. You are wasting energy and reducing the value of outrage as a deterrent.
Outrage would be a useful if it resulted in action. So anytime there is outrage, the offending party would retrace their steps. Because they would be aware "shit is about to go down!"
So if the first time Twitter/Facebook/Apple indiscriminately fucked over developers, out rage resulted in something that affected them, things would have been different today.
>I also don't understand your position on this matter. if you agree that patents are bad, then your cynicism does nothing else but to waist(sic) other people's time
I am against the abuse of patents and this is an abuse of patents. I am hoping my "cynical post" will offend hackers (who have leverage) enough to say "how dare you say I am all talk!" and take action.
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#266At least the US and USSR realized what Mutually Assured Destruction actually meant. It seems these big companies don't quite understand, and it's going to be pretty sad when they find out.
There is no mutually assured destruction here. Google is helpless.
$56 billion in cash. They're anything but helpless.
A $6 billion bid for RIM would solve the problem.
They also have Motorola's massive patent hoard, with thousands of patents available to assault both Microsoft and Apple. So far Google has mostly played nice on patents.
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#267Well, perhaps in the spirit of knowledge sharing and to set an example Google could share their full search algorithm?
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#268OK. So does this once and for all end the debate about Apple being a proper patent-troll, or do they need to buy a bridge first?
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may be true, but let's not get fooled into thinking that because "they" are the enemy, Google must be our friend. Google is playing a very dubious game here, and it has nothing to do with being on "our" side of the patent issue. They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents. All through this, they've b…
I think separating good guys and bad guys is pretty simple, if one is against (at least software) patents: Using patents aggressively makes you a bad guy. Google has not done this, Microsoft and Apple have.
They haven't done it because they don't have many patents. It's easy to act noble about how you'll use your patents when you don't have any. Other commenters have noted that Google is currently suing Apple and others over standards essential patents (no just because the lawsuit started before their acquisition closed doesn't mean anything, they could settle or withdraw their case). Google had the opportunity to join a consortium with Microsoft to bid on the Novell patents, they declined. They could have joined this consortium as well but they decided to bid for it alone. Not only would it have shared the costs among the group, but it would have also prevented each other from suing over them. Google clearly wanted to control these patents themselves so that they could extract licensing deals from others, something that isn't so easy to do when you just have a license for a patent.
Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
#270Anybody else seeing Google suing Microsoft and Apple directly in the future or is it just me?
This is battle stations and given Google doesn't use shell companies they either make one or declare all out war.