<story><title>Google: Patently Absurd</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/08/google_patently_absurd</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joebadmo</author><text>It&apos;s weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he&apos;s not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that&apos;s so self-evident?&lt;p&gt;His arguments here are just so disingenuous.&lt;p&gt;&quot;So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, because Google isn&apos;t forming a cartel to stifle competition.&lt;p&gt;&quot;It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, because Google isn&apos;t using an artificial barrier (the patent system). And because those patents are bogus. Because most, if not all, software patents are bogus. That&apos;s pretty clearly Google&apos;s stated position.&lt;p&gt;&quot;First, the “estimate” of $1 billion was partially set by Google itself.&quot;&lt;p&gt;But there&apos;s no denying that this is by several times the largest amount ever paid for a patent portfolio.&lt;p&gt;&quot;They’re effectively arguing against the idea of the patent system itself, simply because Android violates a bunch of patents held by Google’s competitors.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes they are arguing against the patent system, at least for software, as do many in the industry. There&apos;s nothing hypocritical about that.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Google supporters claim that Google only wants to use patents defensively. But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?&quot;&lt;p&gt;This argument betrays either a very weak understanding of how defensive patents work or a deep dishonesty of argumentation. Maybe both. This argument can be applied to the very idea of defensive patents.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s conflicting that someone who&apos;s so obviously intelligent and often terribly insightful (not to mention witty) can be so willfully dishonest.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m going to back to only reading Gruber&apos;s writing on Apple, and ignoring his writing on anything else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danilocampos</author><text>&quot;Yes, because Google isn&apos;t forming a cartel to stifle competition.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Hmm. I&apos;m not so sure. There&apos;s a way to see Google&apos;s behavior where what they&apos;re doing is &lt;i&gt;precisely&lt;/i&gt; that.&lt;p&gt;Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out – or prevented from entering, since they couldn&apos;t recoup the costs involved in developing a product.&lt;p&gt;In league with their manufacturing partners, Google has their own cartel, attempting to homogenize the smartphone landscape under a single, free OS.&lt;p&gt;The incentives are obvious: it&apos;s much easier for Google to make its ad money if it controls the next big platform.&lt;p&gt;They may have dressed it up as pious and open – but for their purposes, it&apos;s a land grab. Is it anticompetitive? I&apos;m not sure. My antitrust scholarship began and ended with &lt;i&gt;The Microsoft File&lt;/i&gt; back in the 90&apos;s. But I&apos;m also not sure it&apos;s any better than whatever satanic pact they are intimating has been formed by Apple and Microsoft.&lt;p&gt;Google&apos;s argument here is summed up as &quot;You could trust &lt;i&gt;us&lt;/i&gt; with those patents. But we didn&apos;t get them. You can&apos;t trust the guys who did get them.&quot; I&apos;m pretty sure at this scale, with this much cash on the line, business just doesn&apos;t work that way. Google will run over anyone to keep their ad money flowing, just as Microsoft will run over anyone to keep their license money flowing. Why should we side with one cause over the other?</text></comment>
<story><title>Google: Patently Absurd</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/08/google_patently_absurd</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joebadmo</author><text>It&apos;s weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he&apos;s not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that&apos;s so self-evident?&lt;p&gt;His arguments here are just so disingenuous.&lt;p&gt;&quot;So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, because Google isn&apos;t forming a cartel to stifle competition.&lt;p&gt;&quot;It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, because Google isn&apos;t using an artificial barrier (the patent system). And because those patents are bogus. Because most, if not all, software patents are bogus. That&apos;s pretty clearly Google&apos;s stated position.&lt;p&gt;&quot;First, the “estimate” of $1 billion was partially set by Google itself.&quot;&lt;p&gt;But there&apos;s no denying that this is by several times the largest amount ever paid for a patent portfolio.&lt;p&gt;&quot;They’re effectively arguing against the idea of the patent system itself, simply because Android violates a bunch of patents held by Google’s competitors.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes they are arguing against the patent system, at least for software, as do many in the industry. There&apos;s nothing hypocritical about that.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Google supporters claim that Google only wants to use patents defensively. But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?&quot;&lt;p&gt;This argument betrays either a very weak understanding of how defensive patents work or a deep dishonesty of argumentation. Maybe both. This argument can be applied to the very idea of defensive patents.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s conflicting that someone who&apos;s so obviously intelligent and often terribly insightful (not to mention witty) can be so willfully dishonest.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m going to back to only reading Gruber&apos;s writing on Apple, and ignoring his writing on anything else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lewisham</author><text>I used to really like Gruber, but he&apos;s become a very twisted orator, who seems to bend everything to Apple&apos;s favor. Maybe he was always that way, and when Apple was the underdog, it felt more like cheerleading than dishonesty.&lt;p&gt;I felt a decent amount of relief when I dropped him from my RSS reader.</text></comment>