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).
- 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