“Google recently complained in a blog post called When patents attack Android that it is the victim of a vast anti-competitive conspiracy to enforce property-rights against Google’s fast-growing Android mobile operating platform. Google goes on to charge that competitors are wielding ‘bogus patents’ ‘as a weapon to stop’ Google’s innovation. Google specifically is complaining it is anti-competitive that a group of some of its competitors outbid Google to own Nortel’s roughly 6,000 patents,” Scott Cleland writes for Forbes.
“Prior to the Nortel patent auction, Google made a high-profile ‘stalking horse’ bid of about $900 million for the Nortel patents that it now complains are largely ‘bogus,'” Cleland writes. “Google also declared after this initial bid: ‘we hope this portfolio will… create a disincentive for others to sue Google…’ If Google was not so patently deceptive in its public relations, Google would have entitled its recent post: When Google attacks patents.”
Cleland writes, “Behind Google’s feigned indignation is an old legal adage: when the law is not on your side you argue the facts, when the facts are not on your side you argue the law, but when neither the law nor facts are on your side – you pound the table. Take note: Google is loudly pounding the table… At core, Google is furiously throwing stones at competitors from its glass house… Arguably no other Fortune 500 company has ever been more hostile to others’ property rights than Google.”
Read more in the full article here.
Evil and desperate.
Alert: Media calls a spade a spade!
I like this strategy, I like it alot!!!’
I need to contact Google so they can hand over all there secrets on there search engine. I am going to start a competitor to Google and need this to be competitive.
You think they would have any problem with that? Competition is good, right?
i agree – i think we should use their search algorithms and put together a search site that has no annoying ad’s. i’m sure people will flock to it in droves.
Not sure how their algos match Google’s, but they’re definitely not tracking you:
http://duckduckgo.com/
+1
A few months ago they complained against Microsoft because they believed Bing was stealing their search results. Heads they win, tails you lose…
It still amazes me that Google tried so hard to buy up patents to protect itself from lawsuits, but now that it couldn’t afford to buy those patents, Google considers the patents bogus.
If Google had purchased patents and came under the protection of the law for their software, you can bet the farm that Google would be suing Apple and others for patent infringement of their purchased “intellectual property”.
Can no one in the Android world see this?
Fable of Aesop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes):
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, ‘Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.’ People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.
I’d forgotten that one; excellent call.
Yeah, if those patents are bogus, why did google offer to pay well over $1B for them?
We’ve done everything else in our power, now we’re gonna argue that Article 1, §8 ¶8 of the U.S. Constitution is unconstitutional.
Ah, yes. For reference:
8.8 To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Pathetic! What a bunch of raving hypocrisy! Do they really think anyone except their most froth-at-the-mouth fandroids will have any respect for their position?
They’re screwed, and they know it. If ‘innovation’ to Google means ripping off IP, then they deserve what’s coming to them. Once again, Jobs was right- the notion that Google is some friendly, caring company is BS.
“Doing evil 24/7” – Google. Let others pave the way with their own hard work and then steal, steal, steal & give away others work for your own less than honorable reasons and then plead as though you’ve done something noble for mankind. May you burn in patent hell Eric T. Mole and your minions of evildoers.
Sad that enough morons will believe Googles LIES!
I thought the saying goes;
When the law is on your side, pound the law. When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound the table.
Or was it ….”fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice……er, won’t get fooled again”. Quote from GB.
LOL!!!
i always thought it was something like “when the law is on your side argue the law, when the facts are on your side argue the facts, when nether is on your side argue ad hominem (emotions).”
How about Google can just go pound Sand!!
Launch a product you developed to the market, but use here and there some technology or property from competitors and then complain when the competitor attacks your product or company.
This is according to Google, you just need to create 85%-95% of a product and JUST misappropriate the rest. Then claim you want 100% legal recognition in the courts of the world. Or better, claim the 5%-15% bogus, insignificant technology YOU decided to use is the reason your product is unable to compete in the market, fairly.
Good god man! Google totally changed their mobile OS strategy to copy iOS.
Grab a brain, Google! You can’t steal other company’s IP and designs. I know that it might be hard for you to understand since that’s what’s made you the behemoth that you are today.
Google protects it’s patents and IP, yet other companies are not allowed to do the same? Google’s patents are legit, while everyone else’s patents are bogus? Gimme a break!
Yes, our patent system needs reform, but stealing someone else’s work, is stealing someone else’s work.
You can steal other company’s IP and designs, you’ve just got to pay for the privilege.
Legends in their own mind.
Remember the big stink Google made over Bing allegedly copying Google search results? You’d think Google wouldn’t have been so mad, if they believe Intellectual Property rights are anti-competitive.
Remember when Kruschev pounded the table at a UN assembly meeting with his shoe? That’s you, Google – blustering your way to oblivion.
If the patents are ‘bogus’ as they claim, then Google should have nothing to worry about.
Bottom line: it’s not fair for Google to copy other’s innovation, then compete by giving it away.
I don’t think they understand what ‘anti-competive’ is… you know like destroying the market for mobile os’s by offering yours free, just because you have more money then God.
Google’s seems to be in a race to see who unravels faster – them or Micro$oft.
So, then, it should be okay for Microsoft to copy Google’s search methods, right? I call on all to copy google in search and see how Google will react!
We already know how Google reacts to this – the same way they reacted to losing the Nortel patent auction: like whiny babies.
They even went to extreme lengths to “catch” Bing at this copying behavior – very hypocritical, and amusing in light of this story today.
I.e. Screw privacy, screw property, make everything free so we can take it.
And in a related story, Milli Vanili claims that singing is ‘over-rated’….
Google will be singing “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You,” sooner then they think.
Pussies.
The whole thing with Google and Android is really just very, very strange. Google isn’t interested in manufacturing and selling phones, manufacturing and selling tablets, or even in selling operating systems for those things. All it really wants is for those devices to route their searches through google and to route other services through google.
The strange thing about all of this is that they’re in a fight with Apple when all the evidence is that Apple would have been happy doing exactly what google wants–using google as the backend of searches and other services for iOS devices. If anything, by pushing Android out there as an iOS competitor Google has trashed its very comfortable relationship with Apple and made Apple go into backend services it would have left to Google absent Android.
Gotta wonder if all of this is traceable back to the exclusive deal between AT&T and Apple being for too long a time. Would this battle have started if Google hadn’t been afraid that someone else (Microsoft?) was going to jump into the smartphone void created by that exclusive deal, that void being all those millions of Verizon subscribers wanting iPhone features but not wanting to switch to AT&T’s spottier coverage.
Very insightful. I absolutly agree!
OpJ, while your train of thought is highly logical, it misses the fact that Google started developing Android two years before the iPhone was released, and that Eric T. Mole knew about the iPhone and was able to pass on the iPhone secrets to Google months before the world knew about them.
This is what the Android types do not appreciate – if you are merely copying someones intellectual property (note: the word property denotes ownership), all you essentially have in your grubby little hands is Oracle/Apples/Microsofts/Etc. development work and property that Google essentially has stolen. That is NOT innovation. That is stealing pure and simple! In fact, to put it another way, Google is no different than the looters in England.
We can and should decry the obvious hypocrisy emanating from Googleland and trust that Justice will prevail. But, it is well to remember that Google is rich and powerful and far from stupid.
There is a well-considered strategy at work here. I am not claiming to be privy to that strategy; I am forced to rely on intuition.
Google is not faring well in the courts of jurisprudence and public opinion. What to do? Take it to the streets – the web. Hence Schmidt’s whine and the public pronouncements, of late, by their chief legal counsel.
To me this does two things:It energizes the fandroid base (which can be both vocal and propagandistic – facts are meaningless) and the resulting publicity attracts the attention of politicians, as certain as sharks to blood.
Of the two, the politicians are more problematic because they are not only venal (Google has a surplus of grease for every out held palm) but they wield considerable authority and influence.
I mentioned yesterday Schmidt’s attendance at this year’s Bilderberg Conference; and that is a patronage not to be gainsaid.
Google… *yawn*
They’re doing what they are suppose to be doing for the OEMs. Even if it ultimately fails, they will still get the Ad revenues from iPhones. But the bonus $ from handset makers is what they are supposedly trying to protect, if not at least keep supporting.
People complained about Apple, “Why not share all that cash with their shareholders?” Well, you got your answer, litigation, patent acquisition, technology acquisition. The stock is fine (despite the market). You want your cash? Do options or outright sell the stock…
We should stop being surprised at Google… They are a bunch of cry babies… Just name them that… Cry Babies.
Not getting ad revenue from me. I’ve switched everything to Bing. I encourage you all to do the same.