The problem with Gruber is that he'll write a fair analysis only as long as the fair analysis favors Apple. This means we won't get a fair analysis from him on things like the patent war and app store high-handedness. Sometimes he'll do a great piece. Sometimes you have to sift carefully for the bias. Then there are articles like this - insults, lies and condescension:
- Lyons has always been an ass, but when did he get so bitter?
- you just look childish when, only after losing the auction, you then claim you didn’t really want the thing anyway (google never cried sour grapes on nortel)
- Motorola knew they had Google by the balls. ... and they made Google pay and pay handsomely
The trick is not to get fooled by the reasonable-sounding phrases like: Another way to look at this story... and That’s not to say it wasn’t a bold, brash move, or even... the right move.
To those of you discussing Gruber's position on patents: it is the patents that change position relative to Gruber. :)
The argument for this is pretty simple: They bid up several billion dollars. They lost. Suddenly, they decry the bidding as anti-competitive. Sour grapes.
"The winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion. Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop." -- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...
No it's not! Google wanted those patents "to save Android from the competitors" and when didn't get them they just said: "Nah, we didn't want them anyway". Are you kidding me? Who on earth would bid such an amount if they didn't want those patents.
Also no-one wrote a article about the patents beside Google itself. The ones who didn't get shit.
Sorry but if this aren't sour grapes I don't know what is.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Microsoft wanted to gang with Google in the first place but after Google lost they said "they ganged against us". It's just ridiculous.
This has been stated a lot of times on HN, but anyways :)
1. I think you are mixing deals
2. GOOG accepting MS offer would have been dumb. Google wanted the patents to avoid lawsuits from MS-Apple. Teaming up with them would have meant that these patents are useless against them (I assume that Apple/MS would not have said - okay we team up for now, but you can sue us using these patents later).
3. I am not sure, but a lot of people have quoted that Google has been vocal about the stupidity of patent system even before these deals. Also if I am involved in a deal, I will never speak of it (or the stupidity of it) in public. That again, would be a dumb move. So yes, Google's statement should have arrived after they lost the deal. Also, AFAIK they said that the patents might be useless to them technically, but they needed them for litigation wars.
4. Using Pi*1bil as a bid, is no different than 4bil (Other than the magnitude of course). Not to logical people at least. Yes, lawyers who are not aware of the digits of Pi or shareholders who bought shares of the company X because the saw it climbing a month ago, would feel that, but that's dumb stereotyping of numbers - I would say. In fact, 3.14Bil sounds a lot more cultural and sophisticated to me than 3.1 or 4. But that's probably the geek in me.
5. Yes they paid 3 times more. But they also got 3 times the patents (and these are not licensed to MS!) + 1x times patents in review. In addition they got a manufacturing line they can innovate on and a lot of talent.
Also, MM has 3.5Bil in cash reserves. That means that it's actually 12.5 - 3.5. So, still a better deal, I would say. Then again, that's just a CS student talking - I have no idea what these patents are worth.
First of all sorry I wasn't aware that this has been stated a lot here.
I'm not sure if Google is really the hero at this point like other commenters are stating here. Maybe they bought 3 times more patents than MS/Apple but it's not clear to me if all of those are really interesting in this fight.
I have to admit that I just don't like the Google way here. Saying that patent system sucks and and patents are bad but buying more and more patents is just silly don't you think? Plus they said that Nortels weren't worth 4 billion but they bought 3x patents for 12,5 billion. It's just the same ratio isn't it?.
The bottom line is, the only way to avoid getting defenestrated in patent disputes in court, is to have a portfolio. There was no choice if Google wanted to protect their interests. Logically, they had to do something.
As said previously, this acquisition hits a trifecta of benefits, not just a large and Android-relevant patent portfolio. Google can now directly create Android pure phones to their intended specifications, and they have tremendous talent and resources at their disposal.
Patents were huge, but to look at this issue and only see the patents is a logical foible.
The weasel word here is 'suddenly'. They first tried to win the game the easiest, surest way. Now they have to resort to an unsure, annoying, longwinding way. They probably always considered it anti-competitive. That doesn't mean they first and only try to resolve it through playing that card.
The interesting bit is that on the conference call they did say that that was actually not the plan (most likely to keep the other android partners comfortable). Supposedly their process for Android remains the same and Motorola will be on the same footing as everyone else when it comes to software access.
This says that the deal was 100% about patents and nothing else, which in turn says it wasn't that great of a deal in the first place (considering as they paid a big premium for the patent portfolio).
But assuming that they break their promise to partners and do what apple does too by designing both hardware and software together: it would be a good thing for Google as a phone maker, but a nail on the "Android as open" coffin. I don't think they'll be able to risk a move like this - angering their partners and probably breaking Android up -, which just means that the actual impact this will have on the quality of phones coming from Google and Android as a mobile OS is slim to none.
I sure don't hope that Google bought Motorola for that. It will fail just as all other mergers that look good on paper do that.
You got two big cultures coming from completely different parts of the tech world. There is no way that you will get seamless vertical integration that way.
Gruber is part of an interesting phenomenon that has emerged over the past few years: supporting companies (and reviling their 'opponents') with the same passion that people normally reserve for sports teams.
This is not a recent trend. People have been devoted to Apple since their founding. Comparing this devotion/passion to sports teams is probably understating it - Wired's feature on Apple in 1997 had a picture of the Apple logo with a crown of thorns on the cover. Going further back, families and pundits had similar devotion to car and cigarette companies.
There weren't blogs to document it, but you'd see many of the same arguments over videogame consoles, computer platforms, car manufacturers, clothiers, sports teams, warlords, philosophers, religions ;). Identifying with a side in a large competition falls under the category of basic human behavior.
The point of the article (which is secondarily a hit on Dan Lyons) is that Motorola had Google over a $13B barrel – the exact opposite conclusion to Dan Lyons' piece. As a kind of aside, Gruber is defending M.G. Seigler against ad hominem attack by going ad hominem on Dan Lyons.
It's better to treat Gruber like a tool and stop giving him attention. Don't submit his posts to HN, don't upvote them, don't discuss them (here I am doing just that so make of that what you will)
In other words, the only reason some people are well known is that they're well known. That kind of fame burns out quickly once people stop paying attention.
calling the author a troll without addressing his arguments is either plain abuse or ad hominem abuse. Take your pick, either way it isn't contributing to the discussion, is it?
Fair enough. I was actually trying to (rather inarticulately I'll admit) pose a more meta-comment that wasn't directed specifically at Gruber, but rather at HN writ large. Stop posting (or at least upvoting) his dreadfully predictable blog posts where we'll spend the next couple days complaining about how he's an overbiased Apple fanboy.
Allow me to elaborate then -- while a rather good writer, Gruber is not interesting because Gruber is predictable:
1) If it's a subject that favors Apple, he'll write about favoring Apple.
2) If it's a subject that doesn't favor Apple, 99% of the time he'll spin it to death such that it favors Apple.
The formula then to a Gruber post is to take recent news, whatever it's about, make Apple looks good by the end of it.
The only time Gruber is interesting is when he actually does criticize Apple -- and Apple virtually has to start a program of using orphans to power their new office building for him to do it.
The meta-comment is that this is all known ahead of time. Yet every time Gruber makes a blog post 2 things happen on HN.
a) It makes the front page
b) Everybody spends 100 or so comments articulating #1 and #2 above. I mean seriously, are there any comment threads here that aren't in some way about this?
Out of 15 threads (and I'm being charitable with what I'm calling a thread, there's really only 4 or 5 with any significant actual discussion) fully 10 of the threads are about #1 and #2 above.
This isn't a signal to noise problem, this is just noise. And worse yet, it's uninteresting noise because this is literally every set of comment threads for every Gruber post.
It's dreadfully dull stuff. So I'm adding my 2 cents into the "let's just stop feeding Gruber by relegating him to not the front page of HN and we don't have to suffer through another front page post with ~70% complaints about his bias" bucket. If people want to read his writing, and know when he posts something new, they can subscribe to his RSS feed.
Slightly off-topic but one thing I've noticed in particular, is the silliness Gruber spews when the narrative of HTML5 vs. Flash comes about. Gruber treads lightly on the open source aspect of the conversation, but goes full-bore on the battery life commentary.
Battery life is something Gruber likes to talk about a lot, because the open conversation would point arrows right back at him (and Apple). Flash takes battery life, but be fair. It's true to say I couldn't watch movies in Flash for 6 hours, but I can't play Angry Birds for 4 hours, either. In fact, I don't think there is any application I have on my iPhone that would run for 8, 10, 12 hours (screen on), or whatever ridiculous milestone Flash should single-handedly reach. I think the best I've gotten was 6 hours (screen on) of Internet radio.
I think Gruber has always been fairly upfront that openness of the platform has never been a big concern of his. I don't usually read his posts, but he usually wears his biases on his sleeve (even if he doesn't always draw attention to them).
This is the most sensible commentary I've seen yet. Fits the "America is pretty much screwed" articles making the rounds these days. It's actually pretty damned depressing that $20 billion dollars was spent on a legal game rather than awesome R&D.
The money's not gone, it's mostly just transferred from one party to another -- in this case, from Google to Motorola's shareholders. Of course, many man-hours are wasted in the legal wrangles, but it certainly doesn't add up to $20 billion dollars of lost productivity.
You can say that about practically any transfer payment. The cost of a transfer payment is opportunity cost. If Google invested 20 billion dollars in R&D, we'd have 20 billion dollars of R&D done in addition to someone, somewhere, having that 20 billion dollars to spend again.
The worst thing is that Google is now invested in the problem by $20 billion more than it was previously. The more invested U.S. companies become in patents, the more difficult it becomes to make change.
The other big non sequitur in this argument is that Apple and Microsoft claim that Android steals their own hard-won inventions but they're buying up other companies' IP to bludgeon Android with.
That implicitly assumes these patents are mostly forky-spoony stuff. What if they represent real innovation? In that case the system is working exactly as intended; investors are getting a return on R&D.
Whenever these ridiculously huge acquisitions take place, it's always the same. How can Google possibly think that 20 billion couldn't have created something far better than anything Motorola has to offer. They have the talent, the infrastructure, the money, the manpower.
I think speed is often the issue with in-house development. Sure, you could make a pretty good product by spending a few billion dollars, but you won't get it next week. An already established install count has to be worth something too.
The primary issue that I have with Gruber's argument is that it seems to reverse some of his more recent assertions about the Google Patent Wars(TM). Haven't we been hearing from Gruber for months on end how patents were going to somehow destroy Android (or cripple it, which is basically the same thing)? Now we're supposed to simply ignore that Google bought 3x the Nortel patents at 3x the price[1] (Gruber's math, not mine), a move that greatly diminishes (if not negates) their loss in the Nortel auction? Now we're supposed to focus on Motorola's problems as a handset manufacturer?
I get that Gruber's mainly going after the over-the-top Lyons piece (a piece which strikes me as poorly thought out and terribly argued). But it does seem like this is Gruber's first move toward a pivot away from the importance of patents in Android vs. Everyone.
You know, those patents that Gruber has been trumpeting for weeks now as the death knell of Android.
Gruber has for a long time made his living off of propping up strawmen and beating them down, much to the amusement of his readers. Everyone knows that Leander Keahney and Dan Lyons are insane, only Gruber goes to the pain of proving them so, with little insight or value added to the discussion, other than to incite his audience to gleefully laugh at the stupidity of the 'other'. I can't believe it actually took me so many years to realise this, but he is off my rss now.
As you know, it's easy to get backslapped on pro-Google hn by dissing Gruber, but why not just respond to his analysis instead.
Gruber seems to be right an awful lot for someone so casually vilified. For example, he took a lot of flack here for defending Apple's move to leave flash out of mobile safari. I think enough time has passed to make clear that he and Apple were right.
The anti-Gruber hate looks more like sour grapes every day.
As you can see, I'm being downvoted, and that's fine. Gruber is a polarising topic on HN. I just find that he has long since departed from any actual insight and instead works mostly with snark and misdirection to the point where it is pointless to even discuss his opinions. Perhaps I should be downvoted for the previous post, because it is not pertinent to the discussion, but I felt it had to be said.
Is Gruber right, or has Apple made all the right moves since about 2003? I think the main complaint by people who see Gruber pieces on HN all the time is that they argue that he's just an Apple pundit and/or apologist.
Another way of asking this question is, can you name three times that Apple and Gruber differed, but Gruber was in the right?
Another example, I'm not sure it qualifies, is that Gruber never liked the brushed metal theme and the inconsistency with which Apple applied it to different applications.
Apple did eventually retire the brushed metal theme and is getting a bit more consistent in the styling of their applications. Still some way to go here, too.
Apple and Gruber has generally diverged in how they think the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) should be applied. Gruber has called them out for not applying it as consistently as they did in the past.
But regarding the HIG, it seems Gruber has resigned and is now calling the HIG basically defunct.
I think in general, Gruber is not trying to be right/wrong vs Apple, not trying to offer a strong opinion, except in some unusual cases (see: AppStore rejections). Mostly, he is just trying to understand Apple, and to offer his analysis since Apple is famously quiet and other analysts are often clueless as Apple is a bit of an oddball in the corporate world.
Well, the first and most obvious example is the inconsistency and arbitrariness with which Apple approved or rejected AppStore applications. Gruber was probably Apple's most vocal critic at the time. Apple have improved a lot since, but still have some way to go in that department.
>Another way of asking this question is, can you name three times that Apple and Gruber differed, but Gruber was in the right?
I can.
1. The App Store approval nonsense.
2. The missing white iPhone.
3. Software patents.
4. He's also picked on design choices of Apple with iBooks and believes the Kindle app is better.
These have all occurred within the past year alone. It's fine there are those that disagree with Gruber but I find it best to attack on the merit of what is written and not his bias. It is the easy way out.
> For example, he took a lot of flack here for defending Apple's move to leave flash out of mobile safari
It's been much more than a year since Steve's blog post about how Flash is unneeded because of HTML5, and I am still waiting for the improvements in Safari so that Flash like functionality can be used in web pages. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
I am not holding my breath though, Apple wants to push developers towards apps and not web pages, because they get to make money on every sale and also because it creates a lock-in for their platform.
Even the most cursory glance at real numbers establishes this as irrelevant. Apple's App Store revenues are measured in millions of dollars. Apple's revenues on hardware are measured in billions. They use the App Store to sell more hardware. It's infrastructure with next to no margin.
I think you skipped the other part of recoiledsnake's point about how app sales create lock-in. To me, that is the bigger reason for Apple's focus on apps (and on controlling the content delivered to iOS devices).
That point is a clear but unrelated piece of strategy. Apple doesn't want Flash for myriad reasons before you even get to "maybe people wouldn't build as many native apps."
I think you'd get a chuckle from the Apple brass if you asked if they were worried that people would stop building apps if only they had access to Flash. Of course they wouldn't — the UX and fiscal rewards are unbeatable.
Apple creates lock-in all on their own by providing a solid set of developer tools and APIs, along with UI/UX patterns that work really well. You get some great stuff on iOS that's tough to build, and so tough to find, elsewhere. Flash wouldn't change that — it's general purpose, not specialized to the platform.
It's a bit like saying you don't eat sewage because it's bad for your health. I mean, that's true, but the real reason you don't do it is because you find it revolting to the senses. Apple may enjoy strategic benefits from their Flash stance along the lines of what's been described here. But their opposition to it comes from much more high-level, basic concerns.
Why can't I put a web app in the app drawer on my Android phone and run it as an app without the browser chrome? For a vendor who allegedly does not care about the web and only cares about platform lock-in, Apple sure does spend a lot of resources on Webkit and making mobile Safari a best-in-class experience.
"I think Motorola knew they had Google by the balls. Google needed Motorola’s patent library to defend Android as a whole, Motorola knew it, and they made Google pay and pay handsomely."
I don't see how you're getting a reversal out of that. Talking about Motorola's problems is only to highlight that Google would not have spent $12.5 billion on the company if not for the patent issues.
Because Gruber's summary of the entire story is "I think Apple and Microsoft probably feel pretty good, competitively, about having forced Google into spending $12.5 billion for Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales, no recent profits, and misguided management", which ignores the single most salient factor in the deal. Ultimately, Gruber would like us to believe that, all things aside, Google has bought a crappy handset maker, rather than a massive patent portfolio.
That patent portfolio can't be that threatening to neither Apple nor Microsoft, considering the fact that both companies are already in litigation against Motorola and those specific patents, and so far it's not looking grim.
So now we're down to judging entire stories based on whether the last sentence includes what you think is the most important thing about it? Why even read the whole thing if you're going to ignore almost all of it?
Look, this is Gruber's bottom line, all of his caveats aside. At the end of the day, that's how he views this story, and I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this is going to be a fairly succinct example of his thinking and arguments going forward.
That strategy is going to conveniently rely on his readers forgetting his near-obsession with Google's supposed doom at the hands of Apple and Microsoft's patent portfolios.
That's why it is a reversal-- because patents, once so important, probably aren't going to factor into his incessant Google criticism in the future, despite the fact that he has made them the cornerstone of many of his arguments until now.
On the one hand, you're complaining about his supposed "near-obsession" (as opposed to every other person writing on the subject? what's the measurement here?) but on the other you're saying that one sentence is proof that it was all some kind of ruse and he'll never speak of it again. As if patents not figuring into one sentence means he can never say anything about them again. What a great leap that is! He's trying to make a point about something, but you're treating it as if it's a total retraction of every other point he's ever tried to make--even in the same post--because...why? Because it's not just a restatement of what he said last week, in a different context? I don't understand that at all, even under the banner of HN's predictably frothing meme of disdain for the man.
Not only do I not understand that, I don't understand how on earth one man gets such scrutiny about precisely how much he talks about something, down to the sentence, when dozens of sites have been publishing on the same subjects. This is news. When new things happen, people write about them. Google bought Motorola. That's news. But must Gruber (or anyone) interpret or discuss that solely in terms of patents (or any one angle)? Why is commenting on any other aspect of the deal forbidden? Makes no sense.
Frankly, I can't understand what's your point with this phrase. I think he obviously meant Google paid 12.5 billion for Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales, no recent profits, and misguided management - _only for the patents_. He's not ignoring the most salient factor in the deal; he's just reaffirming that, to get to the patents, Google paid 12.5 billion for the whole, including the bad parts that he's highlighting.
If you read the story carefully and completely, you'll note that he agrees that this very well may have been the right move, but right relative to the weak position that he has been arguing Google was in. He's by no means being inconsistent to say that their improved position is still weak.
I appreciate the advice, but I did read the article carefully and completely. My original comment, read carefully, has far more to do with the nuances of Gruber beginning to turn his arguments now that he can't bray night and day about how very threatened Google is by the combined patent portfolios of it's enemies.
Wich has zero to do with whether this post of his is insightful, correct, or worth reading. That's the trouble with ad hominems, they aren't adding value. What I as a fellow reader want to know is whether this postnis wrth reading, and if so, what to watch out for good or bad.
I don't care if the previous 99 post by the same author are lumps of coal, I want to know whether this one is a diamond.
Well...yeah. As the facts change, do you not expect the outlook to change as well? This widespread tendency to hold others with whom one might disagree to an impossible standard is getting tiresome.
I would be just fine with banning Daring Fireball from HN, if it meant we could avoid the biweekly DDoS on HN's intellectual capacity sparked by tens-deep threads arguing about Gruber's pro-Apple bias.
Only on HN or Reddit is Gruber's pro-Apple stance not the most boring conceivable topic. It's embarrassing to see ostensibly smart people pick it apart, as if it was faceted and nuanced.
I myself love Daring Fireball, because Gruber is an f'ing good writer. But I could give a sh!t about discussing him on HN. Anyone else want to just start flagging these things off the site? Look at these silly comment threads. You'd be doing a lot of people a favor by nipping them in the bud.
The worst part in this case is that he's shooting fish in a barrel. The article he picks apart isn't deserving of the analysis.
Sometime Gruber posts interesting theories or observations, and in that case I'm all about discussing them, but this article is just filler for his core demographic.
That's a sad but unsurprising commentary on the state of discussion boards on the Internet in general; when I wrote this comment, the majority of the comments on this story were in some way about Gruber, not the story.
I'd go into the front page and New and flag any instances (often duplicate ones) I saw. I saw at most 2-3 a page that way. Considering how slow those load during lunchtime for me, I wasn't flagging any unreasonable amount.
Maybe there's only so many flags a day you can make (and I didn't just flag for sources) maybe it's the sources I flagged, maybe it's something I can't even guess that was mentioned at some post at 8am in the morning one day.
I flagged it, this constant noise about Gruber's Apple religion drowns out any conceivable signal of interest. Better to just link to a Reuters article or something and have a better discussion here.
>if it meant we could avoid the biweekly DDoS on HN's intellectual capacity sparked by tens-deep threads arguing about Gruber's pro-Apple bias
It is also about the topic at hand and people defending Gruber's(or Asymco's or Marco's) pro-Apple bias as if it were somehow insightful or interesting.
> It's embarrassing to see ostensibly smart people pick it apart, as if it was faceted and nuanced.
It is more embarassing to see otherwise smart people defend it in the comment threads (eg. people saying that a sales comparison of 20 year old failed consoles with current Android tablets today somehow indicates that those tablet makers will fail and should shut shop instead of trying).
>Anyone else want to just start flagging these things off the site? Look at these silly comment threads. You'd be doing a lot of people a favor by nipping them in the bud.
Who upvotes these stories(beyond the reach of flagging) with shallow analysis favoring Apple anyway? I don't think it's the crowd arguing against Gruber's posts. It is people that think that the analysis worth spreading and discussing about.
I think I have a better solution for stories from Gruber, Asymco and Marco. Have a checkbox in the user profile indicating if you're a Apple fan and only those people see the stories from the above sites.
Instead of trees of discussions and accusations of downvoting, we could have just a flat discussion and mutual upvoting undisturbed by counter arguments.
Won't that work fabulously and prevent this nonsense of people having to respond to actual discussion with actual posts instead of just handwaving with one liners?
Filter Marco Arment? Yes, let's definitely hide stories from a sole proprietor of a mobile software company who's making enough money on one app to afford an NYC mortgage because he makes you feel bad about your choice of mobile operating systems. It's not like anyone on HN might want insight into that kind of person. Solo founder? Nah. Apple fanboy.
Criminy. Do I need better evidence for why we should avoid discussing Daring Fireball posts than a comment like this?
He seems like a good writer only if you're already under the RDF, otherwise he comes across as a shallow spin and mudslinging machine and defacto Apple PR. Example of a predictable and hypocritical post: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/15/apple-samsung-im...
This is the reason for the disconnect between the HN commenters and the flame wars. It's just hard for people to understand others almost-bordering-on-religion obsessions and biases.
While you say you'd be fine with banning DF from HN, we all know which segment of HN'ers vote up DF, Asymco and some of Marco's stories here, some of which have very convoluted and shallow arguments/analysis/math which seem cherry picked and tailor-made to prop up one particular company and don't withstand five minutes of reasoned analysis.
The problem is that some of these articles are "something that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (from the HN guidelines) to a group of people rooting for a company and totally shallow drivel to others, so no wonder it's all a flamefest that isn't going to go away soon.
I'm an admitted Google fanboy, but I think Gruber (along with the other two, generally) is an excellent writer and analyst when he's writing about Apple unrelated to any other company. And since it's pretty undisputable that Apple is one of the most important companies in the world and such an anamoly in so many ways, I find it pretty important to read Gruber on the subject.
In fact, I often wish there was a writer with as aserbic a wit and as insightful an analytical mind on the subject of Google (Dan Lyons doesn't qualify, though fake Steve Jobs was pretty funny). Not for the apologia like this piece, but for when writers like Gruber, Marco, and especially John Siracusa are critical of their subject of obsession. The thing I love about Siracusa's podcast (Hypercritical) in particular is that you can really feel true, unadulterated, and unself-conscious devotion to the subject in the unchecked criticism he gives. And I wish that culture existed around Google.
There are plenty blogs that follow Google news in a sort of flat way (9to5google, GoogleOperatingSystem), and Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand provides analysis, but it's all on sort of a surface level. (And, Sullivan is great, but I wouldn't call him a great writer so much as a comprehensively knowledgeable one.)
Maybe what I really want is Steven Levy to write a blog for real.
(Note: I try to be the change I want to see in the world, but I don't have the talent, sources, or time to write as well as I'd like. But I do my best. http://blog.byjoemoon.com/ )
You're absolutely right. Gruber is an opinion guy at best (albeit a smart one), and his articles lack the type of technical analysis we ostensibly care about on HN. Then again, the front page is full of Techcrunch articles...
You want to analyze Gruber? Look at his writing style, which is clearly influenced by David Foster Wallace. He's a damn good writer! Otherwise, take him for what he is -- an Apple pundit with one part brilliance, two parts vitriol -- and stop worrying about what he said 6 months ago. Pundits reverse themselves constantly.
EDIT: I forgot to mention his taste for design and art. I'm more interested in his take on Kubrick's films than anything he writes about Apple.
Does Gruber ever add any real information in an information theoretic sense? He seems to be on Apple's side 100% of the time. (I guess he suggested that the App Store approval process was broken at some point...)
He mostly just appears to be a pro-Apple pundit who has a popular blog that gets a lot of revenue in advertising. But I never see Cringely or Dvorak posts upvoted. What gives?
This does not seem to be very reasoned analysis. He calls the CEO childish and Android (the largest smartphone OS in the US?) desperate. This feels like a hyperbolic opinion piece. What should I be getting out of this article?
Does Gruber ever add any real information in an information theoretic sense?
I'd say the main information content is in who he attacks in the process of boosting Apple. Microsoft and Windows barely get mentioned these days; it's all Google and Android all the time.
I think Gruber, Asymco, et al. have been taken aback by Android's year over year ascendancy. They were certainly predicting gloom and doom of Android, so patents are their last resort to reign in Android now.
See units and marketshare of Android for 2nd quarter 2010 vs. 2011.
People only believe that to be true because Asymco keeps repeating it and getting quoted widely by people like Gruber in the Apple echo-chamber (and because they desperately want it to be true).
A key diversionary tactic Asymco uses is to combine dumbphone and smartphone sales, so companies like Samsung that are transitioning customers from genuinely low-margin, low-cost, end-of-lifecycle products onto relatively much higher margin Android phones are presented as if they are not doing very well, when in fact they have two seperate business: a rapidly growing and profitable Android business, and a break-even or loss-making dumbphone business that they're winding down.
Notice how much "better" HTC is doing in his stats (despite regular doom'n'gloom predictions from him about them in the last year) because they don't have a dumbphone business.
I see this: Google was a happy accident because of the web.
Given the trajectory of Apple, where would the web be in 10 years if Google wasn't throwing everything, and clearly they are doing so, at keeping their platform alive.
Android is about keeping the web a dominant platform as we shift to the next generation of computing.
Google is right to bet the farm on keeping that endeavor alive.
It appears as though they got backed into the corner, but we've never seen Google make a purchase like this.
It's more expensive than usual. And it's not an obvious up-and-comer.
I imagine the #1 thing they could do would be to start picking off staff from both companies to form a super-group to push the hardware into yet unknown territory.
(As a person whose career interests align with Google's I hope the knock it out of the fucking park.)
Motorola held out for a full acquisition at a premium far above the company’s actual value, and threatened to go after its sibling Android partners if Google didn’t acquiesce.
Say what you will about Gruber and his Apple fanboyism, this rings true to me. By and large, the article seems very astute.
I have to agree, this was a very insightful piece if you ask me. Not rambling or scrambling to make sense of everything, which is how some of the other analysis reads on the topic.
Gruber took a few steps back, somehow saw the hole picture and described it tersely. Maybe one of Gruber's best.
Threatening to go after other Android partners makes little sense for Motorola. It's not something Motorola would do to get most profit from it. If Motorola has threatened Google something, it would be to sell to Microsoft. That will make much more sense.
I would bring up IP as a very important for differentiation (among Android vendors). We have a very large IP portfolio, and I think in the long term, as things settle down, you will see a meaningful difference in positions of many different Android players. Both, in terms of avoidance of royalties, as well as potentially being able to collect royalties. And that will make a big difference to people who have very strong IP positions.
That doesn't mean the action make sense. My point is that it won't make sense for Motorola to do that, not whether they did or did not do it. Google can easily tell them that if they do that prematurely, Android ecosystem will fail, rocking the same boat they are in. Sensibly, you can't get much royalties from a failed platform, and Apple/Microsoft won't give Motorola any medals for going that path.
>Motorola held out for a full acquisition at a premium far above the company’s actual value,
According to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2888292 the real purchase price is closer to $7B, not $12.5B as stated in the article, due to cash and deferred tax assets.
The Nortel patents went for $4.5 billion and this acquisition gives Google both a ton of patents as well as a company with physical assets that makes the Droid line of phones and the Xoom tablets. Not to mention, Google has $40B in cash or short term investments just laying around to be put to use.
Gruber claims that Apple and Microsoft probably are feeling great that Google had to shell out $12.5B to acquire a failing company like Motorola along with its 'misguided' management and rapidly declining sales.
So what is wrong with that loaded closing statement? Well lots. Firstly he admits the patents part was a good move for Google and the Android platform. He also does math and says they bought 3x Nortel patents for 3x the price. So essentially Google got ton of other Motorola stuff (hardware division, cable modem, set top boxes, Android handset software team et.al) for free. Plus so far as I can tell Droid is a pretty well known and fairly successful brand and Motorola's management did the right thing in saving the company from going down under - not exactly misguided. Gruber would perhaps only call them guided if they did not compete with Apple in any way shape or form!
And what did Gruber had to say when Apple spent billions on Nortel patents? Nope not desperation or anything. Just the fact that Google lost was super important and Android was going to be in trouble.
Gruber also leaves us with no insight on what Google could have done better. He also doesn't feel nearly as bad about Google having Apple by the balls on Nortel patents and making them pay good for Nortel patents, as much as he does about Motorola having Google by the balls by just doing what any sane business will do to maximize its valuation. In comparison actually Google got an arguably better deal - 12.5B for 25000 patents, and a whole functional, moderately successful hardware company with diverse business.
P.S. Motorola has done phones long before Apple thought about it. As such they know a whole lot more about the hardware part as I can tell by the signal and voice quality of my Moto phone. Google and you will find many that can make reliable phone calls with Motorola phones when iPhone could never. So dissing Motorola may be fashionable but I think they know better.
just FYI, the "Droid" brand is licensed by Verizon, not Motorola. There have been many "Droid" phones, all of them on Verizon and from several different manufacturers.
"Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales" -- Gruber (with a link to an Asymco post, which doesn't actually mention sales figures, only market share)
Last quarter they sold 4.4 million smartphones, up from 2.7 million the same quarter last year. (If you're more interested in market share as depicted by Asymco's graph then they're growing slightly at around 5% of the smartphone market, compared with say Apple which is growing slightly at around 15%, or Samsung which has gained 15% in the last year to just under 20%.)
Even if you like to play the Asymco game of including dumbphones that don't run Android to make Android look bad, they still increased total phone sales year-on-year, to 11 million, meaning their increased Android sales replaced a smaller number of lost dumbphone sales.
Google spent 12.5B.
Motorola has 3B in cash.
The stock market thought motorola was worth around 6-7B incl cash (assuming they weren't just factoring in a takeover already).
So google really paid around 6B for the patents, they don't have to do anything to motorola. They can sell all or parts of it, maybe muck around with some of the parts of Motorola other than cell phones. But either way the Nortel auction was 4.5B for JUST patents while google gets a mobile electronics company + patents for its 12B.
Patents are not measured by quantity, but by their quality. A ton of patents doesn't mean anything if you can't use them in court to hold AppleSoft back.
I don't have the faintest idea whether these patents are of good quality or not, I just wanted to point it out. It's beyond me why so many bright people here on HN think these 25,000 patents might worth the same as (or three times more of) Nortel's patents. They 'might', but we don't know that as a fact. I'd always heard Nortel was strong on patents, but prior to this day I didn't know that Motorola had any patents at all.
It's true that Motorola is not the most exciting handset maker. However, if Google could just get rid of the nonsense and get Motorola to create "pure" devices, some very good things could come out of it. They are certainly capable of it.
Personally I am hoping to hear an announcement of the Xoom 2 as soon as possible.
The price of $12.5B is prior to discounting the $3B+ in cash the MMI is holding. A lot of emphasis is placed on the '$12.5B' value in this article, without taking into consideration that this is really 25% higher than the effective price of $9.5B, once you back out the cash.
The article makes a great case that Motorola is the real winner.
The buyout can't have been solely for the patents, because Motorola are losing patent battles. It's unlikely that it was just to own a phone manufacturer, because why buy a 3rd rate one at a 60% premium? So why? Because Motorola had Google by the balls and could have further fucked Android up for everyone else.
It's a shame how every discussion of a Daring Fireball article here collapses into 'Gruber is a fanboy', but it's particularly frustrating when it's an insightful article like this one. If he's half as bad as some of you make out, it should be easy to argue the points without resorting to attacking the man.
Is it an analysis or rant? Looks like JG is more annoyed with the fact that GOOG got patent portfolio than credible threat to iPhone with possible all integrated Moto based Android devices.
He is absolutely wrong on whole "patent wars" issue. Of course GOOG is showing its "big brother" attitude time to time but his beloved AAPL is not clean either. This holier than thou attitude sucks!
Moto may be "second-rate" mobile maker. They may be in loss. GOOG is not stupid to shell out 12B "just" for patent portfolio. Always remember GOOG thinks ahead of everyone. People were criticizing GOOG when they made Android open and free. They were criticizing about paying too much money to YouTube (which is on fire now). GOOG is definitely smarter than Gruber.
- Lyons has always been an ass, but when did he get so bitter?
- you just look childish when, only after losing the auction, you then claim you didn’t really want the thing anyway (google never cried sour grapes on nortel)
- Motorola knew they had Google by the balls. ... and they made Google pay and pay handsomely
The trick is not to get fooled by the reasonable-sounding phrases like: Another way to look at this story... and That’s not to say it wasn’t a bold, brash move, or even... the right move.
To those of you discussing Gruber's position on patents: it is the patents that change position relative to Gruber. :)
edit: typos, formatting