Yesterday, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond blogged about the patents arms race that has major tech companies building gigantic portfolios of pricey patents, then using them to launch lawsuits or extract licensing fees (or, sometimes, to defend themselves against other companies launching lawsuits or extracting licensing fees). He called his post "When patents attack Android," and accused Google competitors such as Apple and to buy patents and use them to damage Android in the marketplace.
And then something unexpected happened: Microsoft released an e-mail from a Google executive which seemed to prove that Microsoft had invited Google to join it in bidding on some of the patents in question. Google declined to participate. Some conspiracy!
Drummond's post has accomplished something which you might have thought was impossible: it's leading to blogosphere coverage which largely sides with the patent aggressors. And while I agree with at least part of the gist of the post -- patents on questionable "inventions" are stifling innovation rather than aiding it -- the post doesn't make a convincing case that Google is being persecuted.
To wit:
1. Drummond: "Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other's throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on." Sure, Microsoft vs. Apple is the tech world's most legendary ongoing battle. But the companies' history of working together when it serves both their interests is just as long. Remember this?
2. "But Android's success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents." Which patents are bogus, and why? We don't need a full accounting, but examples would have helped. (Google has vast quantities of patents itself, so I presume it's not opposed to patents, period.)
Also: nothing inherently wrong with competition between big companies being hostile. It's not always genteel and cheerful, and that's okay. Even necessary.
3. "Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation." What's with the "Instead of?" Apple is responsible for more of the smartphone biz's influential new features than any other single company. Its devices are the most iconic ones on the planet. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 may not have much traction, but it's clever and available on a bunch of handsets. Both companies are building and fighting.
4. "Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anticompetitive means -- which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop." I hope so! And if it does, Google doesn't have a long-term problem here.
5. "Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices -- and fewer choices for their next phone." I like cheap phones as much as the next gadget nerd. But I don't have any fundamental problems with the idea of companies using patents to preserve a competitive edge and prevent the value of inventions from immediately dwindling. It's when the patents aren't really for inventions that we have a problem. And Google's case would be a lot stronger if it demonstrated the bogosity of the patents it says are bogus.
As Paul Thurrott and others have pointed out, Android has gained so much mobile market share in so little time at least in part because Google gives it away to handset manufacturers that were used to paying companies such as Microsoft for software. Google can afford to give away a mobile operating system because it utterly dominates the search engine advertising business. The company knows how to play hardball. And if it's going to blog about all this-and I think it should -- it would be smart for it to explain just what makes Microsoft and Apple's actions unethical rather than just very, very aggressive.
[UPDATE: Google has amended the original blog post with a response to Microsoft's leaked Google e-mail. It's probably just me being dense, but I don't understand Google's brief explanation of why it chose not to join Microsoft's bid for the patents in question.]
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The Ink-O-Dem ink-refilling system has been on my mind for some time. As PCWorld’s Serial Refiller, I’ve been trying refilled and remanufactured black and tricolor cartridges for my HP Photosmart e-All-in-One, assessing their ease of use, output quality, and page yield. So far, all have been somewhat to significantly cheaper than the printer vendor's own cartridges; none, however, have matched the originals in output quality and ease of use, although some have come close.
Based in McHenry, Illinois, Ink-O-Dem has installed on-site ink-refilling machines in thousands of stores nationwide, including Ace Hardware and Walgreens locations, as well as campus bookshops. You bring empty cartridges to the store, where an employee refills the tanks and returns them to you. (Contact the store first to confirm whether its machine supports your cartridges.) This is a step up from do-it-yourself refilling, letting someone else handle the messy part; trying Costco’s ink-refilling service, a similar procedure, was one of the easiest experiments of the seven I’ve done so far.
The store was quiet when Melissa visited, so she waited just 20 minutes for the refill. (In contrast, my refill at Costco took an hour.) When Melissa retrieved the cartridges, she noticed that each had been given a little clip-on printhead cover. The cartridges were inside a small zipper-lock bag.
I began printing. The printer's LCD screen posted the usual ominous warnings that accompany third-party ink refills, including 'Original HP ink depleted' and 'Alignment recommended'. The latter one puzzled me, as I had aligned the cartridges only minutes earlier. The prints looked normal, however, so I ignored the messages and soldiered on.
Apple shipped 20.3 million iPhones in the second quarter, ahead of Samsung, Nokia, RIM, HTC and others, in that order.
oid, IDC noted.
For security, meanwhile, the new Wi-Fi software uses the strongest authentication methodology known to exist for mesh networks, the group says. Specifically, in addition to Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) to protect against offline dictionary attacks, it also implements Authenticated Mesh Peering Exchange (AMPE), which enables multiple authenticated nodes to encrypt traffic among themselves.
Comscore said Google+ hit the 25 million visitor mark just shy of its one-month birthday.
"Facebook was the first truly mass market social network and, along with Myspace, was the pioneer," said olds. "They were mostly unknown and had to build up their brand from the ground up. Google+ comes into an environment where social networking has a lot of mindshare and users, and it has the Google name attached to it and Google resources behind it. Its hit count should grow pretty quickly."
