Targeting Google, Apple fires shot to Android’s heart

“It is old news that Apple has been fighting legal battles across the globe against Google Android vendors,” Nigam Arora reports for Forbes.

“Now for the first time, Apple has fired at the heart of Google Android with its new lawsuit against Samsung filed in federal court in San Jose, Calif.,” Arora reports. “The lawsuit is going after Galaxy Nexus. Nexus is Google’s code for the lead device… Going after the lead device running stock Android shows that the clear aim of Apple is Google Android’s heart.”

Arora reports, “The biggest threat to Google appears to be from the claim of infringement of United States Patent 8086604 for unified search. Search is the heart of Google, not just of Google Android.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Let’s hear it for no more dicking around!

Related articles:
Apple goes thermonuclear on Google and Motorola over Android 4.0 – February 12, 2012
Apple requests U.S. preliminary injunction against Android flagship device Samsung Galaxy Nexus based on four high-power patents – February 11, 2012

43 Comments

  1. Go Apple. I hope they end up pulverizing Google with this lawsuit. Schmidt is a thief from his Apple Board of Director days and I totally agree with Jobs that he deserves “thermonuclear” treatment.

    1. Yeah, I wouldn’t really count on that happening. But we’ll see. It’s business and if you understand business you should understand that they all do it. “It’s nothing personal,it’s just business (fanboy)”!

    1. Lawyers and lawsuits are really a very minor expense compared to their growing cash pile. There will be expensive legal fees to be sure, but they will be comparatively far higher for their competitors who, even combined, don’t have 100 billion to spare.

      Even as Apple lowers the legal boom onto the thieves trying to steal their ideas, their cash pile will continue to grow, only slightly slowed by the cost of litigation. Other areas Apple can operate is in locking up supplies and suppliers, manufacturing capacity, and critical supply chains.

      They will suck their competitors profits away, even as they make uncertain whether they will be able to sell the products at all in the long term.

  2. I am a huge fan of Apple but a lawsuit against Google for unified search. C’mon, Google wrote the book on search. I’m sure Google can prove prior art and get this patent invalidated.

    Apple is the most innovative company on the planet, but using patents in this way is something Microsoft would do.

    1. I’m sure Google didn’t invent search the way it works today though they would sue if their IP was stolen but considering Wolfram, Yahoo and many others use their own search techniques and worked hard to create them, Google isn’t pursuing them.

      However, Apple just made the code work for searching on the phone and how Siri uses it (guessing) thus avoiding Google as an information thief. That’s what they are defending, not the ability to search in general.

      So, Google is being Google (iEvil) and if Apple can go after them then they will deserve whatever happens.

  3. Ive stopped using google for all my web searches.

    Best way to beat google – don’t use anything from the company – and don’t Kid yourself that google don’t know everything you do and all that lovely private info you share isnt being sold to companies for loads of cash.

  4. Still hoping for Apple to enter search. That will mark the the beginning of the end of Google. Apple is the only company where a significant share of users would migrate away from Google, just due to brand image alone. Yes, the search has to be good, but combine that with Siri and minimal ads / iAds and you have a hands-down Google killer.

    1. Sorry, but some Apple faithful may move away from Google initially, and Apple could always set Safari to default to Apple’s own search engine, but unless it works very, very well, people aren’t going to move away from Google.

      The problem is not whether Apple could build a search engine which could do the job, but that people will compare results to Google results. So even if Apple offers better, more relevant results, people may not realize that they are in fact more accurate to their request — they may just see that the results are different, and assume that Google is right and Apple (or any other search engine) is delivering less accurate results.

      1. SIRI already offers a significant competitive advantage over Google: since Apple does not need to make money through search, they can offer a range of different partner services, and offer them Ad free. They also don’t need to track everything you do, everywhere you go, and everything you buy.

  5. Sadly, Apple will probably get stiffed … again … simply because nobody wants to face the critics if they were to kill the competition.

    As Apple’s patent lawyers said years ago vs Windows 95 (re being stonewalled) “It’s like the whole world is complicit in the theft of our UI”. He was right. Everyone back then knew Windows 95 was a wholesale rip-off of the Mac OS but they did it anyway, with guilty pleasure. To rule MS legally guilty would have legally declared every citizen a thief, including the judges themselves, and spawned immediate angry protests by millions of Windows PC users.

    1. I believe that was Sculley’s folly. He allowed MS access to Apple’s crown jewels with a poorly written agreement. The lawyers couldn’t do anything to fix it. That’s why it felt so good to hear Jobs say, after showing off the first iPhone and it’s over 200 innovations, “and boy have we patented it!”

      “if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!” (Obi-Wan Kenobi or Steve Jobs, either way it’s awesome)

  6. As much as Apple has a right to sue, it already has 80% of mobile industry profits even with Android, so why not keep it around for insurance against any future antitrust actions?

    1. No need, there’s Windows Mobile for that. You don’t need a competitor with more that 5% marketshare. Well have RIM and WM in the absence of Android. We should be ok.

    1. What would be spectacular is if Apple could crack Googles search algorithms and then release them into open source and fund a project like FireFox to run an Ad Free search engine.

      Google likes to disrupt other businesses by offering paid services for “free”. They need a taste of their own medicine.

  7. If Google were actually in the business of search (hint: their business is selling and serving advertising and by extension selling their users’ information) there really wouldn’t be an issue with any of this. Android has been designed from the ground up to *look* and function as similarly as possible like iOS but to serve the purposes of their true business interests (hint: their business is selling and serving advertising and by extension selling their users’ information).

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