“Google Inc. and Oracle Corp. chief executive officers are squaring off in court today to resolve a dispute that may pose the biggest threat to Google’s Android mobile software, now running on more than 150 million devices,” Brian Womack, Aaron Ricadela and Karen Gullo report for Bloomberg.
“Google’s Larry Page and Oracle’s Larry Ellison were ordered to appear before a federal court magistrate in San Jose, California, after tussling over patents for more than a year,” Womack, Ricadela and Gullo report. “Oracle accused Google of infringing patents related to its Java software, and a settlement means the companies avoid the risk of having a jury decide whether Google owes royalties.”
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Womack, Ricadela and Gullo report, “Oracle’s suit, filed in August 2010, may represent a bigger menace to Google’s software than challenges from Apple Inc., which has already won patent decisions against Android device makers. In settlement talks, Page aims to avoid having to pay Oracle licensing fees that analysts at Citigroup Inc. said could be as high as $15 per device. That sum might slow the adoption of the software, which Google gives away… If Oracle does score a victory against Google, it won’t want to extract too high a fee, said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner. Android needs to be successful for Oracle to get any royalties from the devices, he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
What a joke. If your neighbor raids your house, some ass judge orders you to meet with the thief and settle.
What an ass of judge, what joke of a legal system.
It takes 2 years…. while the thief can sell the stolen goods and make Millions.
I too have a fundamental problem with the utter disregard Google has for IP of others. It is also a monopoly that doesn’t hesitate to use its power in one market to crush competitors in other markets. Great article on this subject at Fortune Magazine:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/19/the-antitrust-case-against-google/
Wow what an epic low in journalism.
Basically they base their entire srticle on a blog post called “google are pussies” that is laced with profanity.
FORTUNE MAGAZINE…. wow how the mighty have fallen… some tabloids have better standards than this middle school mentality trash.
Epic low in journalism? Quite the opposite. It highlights some very important fact s about Google abuses of monopoly power.
The blog you are listed does have immature title but the facts and context of the blog is pure Gold:
• Yelp gets popular? Copy their info, shove Yelp to the bottom of the page and put Google Places and reviews at the top.
• Groupon won’t sell? Spend billions from other businesses to destroy them.
• Twitter and Facebook innovate on search? Take their content, whine when they try and stop you then spend billions to prevent their growth and hopefully destroy them.
• Apple working on a touchscreen smartphone? Spend billions from another business and copy everything you can, down to swipes and apps.
• Need a smartphone operating system with Java. Take Java and use it for your own ends.
• Need a location mapping technology and Skyhook won’t sell? Spend billions from your monopoly profits and strongarm your partners and drive Skyhook out of business.
• Buy up the big travel search sites.
• Claim you are open source but share nothing related to what your business claims to be about — search, and nothing related to how you make your money — advertising
• Claim you are open and standards based but control who gets access to your smartphone operating system
• Like all rich monopolists, they spend millions hiring high priced lobbyists and public relations teams inside the Beltway — for their direct benefit
The only relevant piece of information I see in any of that is IF google is manipulating search results to thwart other companies.
The rest of it makes no sense and I could spin a similar sounding list of “abuses” by any company who uses profit from one market or industry to enter another.
Hell I’ll do one on Apple right here on the fly…
* Facebook gets popular? Create your own social media service and tie it to your online music store monopoly in the hopes you can siphon their customers away and destroy them.
* Amazon can’t be bought? Create your own online bookstore and then force your third party developers and publishers to cut you in on the profits less they want to be barred from selling product on your device.
* A competing music device is capable of allowing users to sync their music with your online music store monopoly? Purposely change your code to break the device capability and release vague statements to your customers to spread FUD and drive sales of your own device.
* Claim you are open and standards based but only release very basic portions of your operating system that is based on open source, keep everything else for yourself.
* Buy up a cpu design firm and start designing your own processors so you can strong arm one of your biggest suppliers on price later down the road.
* Like all monopolists, patent basic functions and procedures at the programming level and use those patents to threaten or extort any competitor
See its not hard? I’m sure some twit will reply to each and every bullet point and argue about how I’m wrong, and I’ll agree right now… not all of it is true.. but on some levels, some of it is very true… which is exactly what the majority of that list about Google reads like… Its conjecture and FUD spun to fit a certain viewpoint…
I can’t take the article seriously… the guy has an obvious agenda and I expect publications to be a bit more ‘balanced’ myself.
Real google Suckup aren’t ya….
Your bullet points don’t stick so no need to reply.
Dude your a joke… But we all needed a laugh.
Google IS manipulating search results and was called out on it numerous times. Here’s just one link:
http://www.benedelman.org/hardcoding/
Meanwhile, in order to abuse the monopolistic position on the market, it’s not required that Google tweaks it’s algorithm (which they have also done recently and has caused a lot of small business get lowered ranks without explicit justifications. Look that up yourself). I’ll just give one instance, Google has placed advertisements for its Android handset at the bottom of its default search page a few months ago, and that has raised a lot of concerns. Their news ranking also seems to contain certain bias against competition. Just do a quick news search on Steve Jobs, and see the how the results are lumped together even though they are unrelated, and many of the stories are weeks old. More often than not, only the disparaging news will be ranked high on the news and that’s just one example.
As for your bullet points, what you might have missed is that Google actually muscled in on other people’s business and real businesses have responded with lawsuits for their suffering. In your hypothetical cases, Apple didn’t ape FB nor Amazon. If you want to blame Apple for being evil there are better examples out there. Right on top of my head, I’d say Apple had infringed other people’s IP with both iBooks and iBookstore. Sadly, then Samsung had decided to ape iBookstore, adding to the grievances of the original innovator of the Delicious Library App.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/iBooks-UI-Stolen-from-Delicious-Library-App-Speculation-133502.shtml
The man makes an excellent point !!!!!!!!!!!!!
These are the times… this is how business is fought these days. Apple can buyout Samsung but will not. Buy them out earn both on Android and iOS and the progress which Samsung made on such devices and it is a TRIPLE win for APPLE.
They then will have the manufacturing.
And corner both markets earning on both sides.
WIN WIN WIN – triple win.
ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.
Time will tell.
Two very different crimes, they do not even relate really.
The only difference is the amount of theft (Google stole billions $$$ from Oracle) but in principle – it’s the same thing.
If only life were so simple…
‘It takes 2 years…. while the thief can sell the stolen goods and make Millions.’
Well since damages are applied retrospectively the delay will only increase the sum awarded – assuming Oracle wins of course. Then there would be licensing dollars going forward…seems like Android could end up costing maybe $50 per phone when MS and Apple are added in.
Free it ain’t.
yeah, they might settle. or the two Larry’s might have a fist/kung fu fight.
which do you think is more likely?
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has described his company’s policy: “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”
Fitting considering schmidt looks pretty creepy
The point is that Google looks very creepy. I couldn’t care less how Eric Schmidt looks.
The whole digital age looks pretty creepy when you think about it.
The amount of information about all of us that can be found online, or that we ‘innocently’ give to anyone on the planet with internet access is astonishing.
The amount of data on people that companies are able to data mine is unprecedented in history.
Ah enough of this crap.. time for me to go order something from amazon, and post private details of my life on facebook… everyone wants to know what I ate for lunch and read about all the douche bags I work with since I use first names in my posts. Oh look! a popup… I just won a FREE IPAD… man all they need is my address, bank routing info (for verification that I’m a human of course) and I get this thing for NOTHING. Hell yeah!
hahahhah – yup!
Does Oracle want to make a profit off Google’s use of Java, or does oracle want Android shut down?
Larry Ellison & Steve Jobs are buddies, and business is business. I haven’t seen anything about Oracle’s wishes.
Like qka says, Ellison wants blood. He will demand at least 5 billion. Licensing will be fine, but only if it retains the name Java not the pseudo-java droid.
Shoot I hope nothing is resolved other then Android completely dissolved. The guy was working for Apple. He sells the information to Google as a company mean while steals Java from Oracle. Hey what’s going on here…
At least Microsoft created supposedly it’s own Java but had to be based on something SunMicrosystems did?
Besides didnt Oracle just buy Suns Java anyways?
MS Java was called J++.
It went a whole lot of nowhere.
Ms was pushing it as a premiere language on windows until Sun took them to court.
MS’s response was to develop .net and c# which is kinda a mix between c, java and the borland delphi rtl/vcl
Okay MS java went nowhere – but sill is alive? – right?
Sun took MS to court – good – but the result now is Sun is dead – and Oracle has their JAVA and VirtualBox 4.
This mix of JAVA in MS .NET was initially SUN JAVA until the courts forced the change – correct. MS was forced to develop a different breed for their purposes.
“Android needs to be successful for Oracle to get any royalties from the devices, he said.”
What a crock! Oracle was successful before the Google patent infringement case. They don’t need Google royalties. Although settling for a nice tidy $5 Billion + $10 per device couldn’t hurt. But $15 per device could really hurt potential and current licensers. Watch the market go into a frenzy!
meanwhile – MICROSOFT is earning royalties – double crooked
Who cares if Microsoft is raking in the loot too from anyone who choose to downgrade to Android?
Oracle and Apple and all the rest who saw their IP stolen deserve to be well compensated by our justice system.
It is time Giggles and those Android porch monkeys paid for the free ride on everybody else’s expensive tech research and development if so orderered by the courts.