Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/15/google_motorola_the_poker_chip_that_cant_be_redeemed/

by AndrewDucker • 15 years ago

42 30 15 years ago

theregister.co.uk

extension• 15 years ago

Now that Google has sunk $12.5B into the patent system, I fear the fight against software patents has lost it's most powerful ally.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

I think it's more the case that Google has to fight both sides of this: acquire patents for defense in the short term, lobby congress for patent reform in the long term.

I think long long-term, the friction of the patent system goes against Google's incentives. Google isn't a hardware company (even though they just bought one). They sell search ads, and their complements are hardware, software, everything between consumers and search ads. If patents in general are a tax on innovation, that's bad for Google.

jobu• 15 years ago

Hindsight is 20/20, but Google would have been a lot better off purchasing Sun and all of its patents than Motorola at a $5 billion premium.

nkassis• 15 years ago

yeah I've been saying this since the oracle deal. 8 billion looks small now for what Sun was. They would also own Java and other important tech that they could have used a lot more than what Motorola offers them. I wonder if they even tried to buy Sun.

vimes• 15 years ago

I don't think buying Sun would have protected Android from Apple/Microsoft/Nokia/etc., just as buying Motorola won't protect it from Oracle. If anything, buying both may have made sense.

jonknee2• 15 years ago

Buying Sun would only have helped Google in one of their current court cases (and not one that buying Motorola was intended to help). Hindsight would have dictated buying both.

jshort• 15 years ago

It may have been better then being out bought once again.

Funnnny• 15 years ago

FTFA: "Android is a copycat platform. The APIs copy Java, and the UI copies Apple's iPhone." too true to read!

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

El Reg should've thrown in something about '... and the kernel from Linux' in there as well, to complete the troll.

tiles• 15 years ago

Seriously.

Google culturally is very pro-Java, and decided to bring that to their new mobile platform, without the legacy baggage of J2ME. It was an engineering decision as much as it was against licensing Sun IP, maybe in light of how poorly J2ME ever did as a development platform.

Android was in development since 2005 and the major post-iPhone change that happened was a larger screen and virtual keyboard, which is what every modern phone has.

There are companies which have blazed trails and Google has not blazed many with its products; but they bring something equally as important to customers as innovation: competition and choice.

aikinai• 15 years ago

"Google didn't take IP seriously, bidding silly numbers (such as pi billion dollars) for the Nortel patents."

Why does everyone keep rehashing this statement that was asinine the first time? How do the specific digits of their bids say anything about Google's stance towards IP? Pi billion is over 141 million more serious of a bid than the 3 billion that I guess would have made everyone more comfortable.

schraeds2• 15 years ago

“Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one of the sources said. “It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,” the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion. “Either they were supremely confident or they were bored.”

Google thought they were playing a game, lost, and has been crying about it ever since.

jonknee2• 15 years ago

Pointing out the ridiculousness of a system isn't the same thing as crying. Neither is making a serious play in the space with the purchase of MMI. Google can simultaneously believe the system is broken and play the system until it is changed.

bitwize• 15 years ago

“Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one of the sources said.

"We bid the sum of --" pinky to corner of mouth "-- NaN billion dollars."

monochromatic• 15 years ago

> bidding with numbers that were not even numbers

What does this even mean?

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

In hindsight, it's easy to imagine the Google executives bidding fancy numbers while rubbing their hands in glee saying "Haha, lets drive up the costs for Apple/MS and waste their cash while we're anyway going to complain to the DoJ like we did with the Novell patents and the deal to buy Motorola is almost closed. Haha. What next, Planck's constant or the Avogadro number?".