Paul Thurrott of Windows Super Site is never one to let a good piece of anti-Apple link bait go by, but this time he's turned his attention towards Google's Android, and how Google "dumping" it on the market for free could be a greater anticompetitive act than Microsoft or Apple patent litigation.
Arguably, by "dumping" Android in the market at no cost, Google--which has unlimited cash and can afford to do such a thing--is behaving in an anticompetitive fashion. In fact, one could argue that Google is using its dominance in search advertising to unfairly gain entry into another market by giving that new product, Android, away for free. Does this remind you of any famous antitrust case?
From which, 10 years later, Microsoft is arguably still reeling. Thurrott's point, and it's worth noting, is that no one is innocent here.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball raises a similar point.
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? How is Google’s argument here different than simply demanding that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al should simply sit back and let Google do whatever it wants with Android, regardless of the patents they hold? And, let’s not forget, give Android away for free.
Which Gruber boils down to hypocrisy, a theme increasingly present in Google coverage.
Which is not to say Google is doing anything different than any other public company seeing to it's own self-interests (and I'll repeat -- any company sufficiently large is indistinguishable from evil). It's just that Google feels so smug about it right now, which is ironic given smugness is usually a quality ascribed to Apple.
In Apple's case, the smugness comes from their sense that they know better than us, that they have better taste, and that we'll take what they tell us to take. In Google's case, however, the smugness now seems to come from a feeling that they think we're too dumb to see the hypocrisy. It's as if they think they can shout "open" and "free" and not actually be open or free (or be open and free on the backs of manufacturers and developers), and everyone from FOSS faithful to Google fanatics will rally to support them, no questions asked. It's as if they think they can shout "un-fair" and "anti-competitive" when faced with trademark and patent litigation from authors and rivals, while continuing to file their own trademarks and patents.
But user trust is a currency and a finite one. You can't spend more than you earn. That's a lesson Apple's learned painfully with everything from MobileMe to Steve Jobs' health to location-gate and antenna-gate. It will be interesting to see how Google learns it and addresses it.
Reader comments
Patent wars merely leveling the playing field against Google Android "dumping"?
All big companies are hypocrites...its as simple as that...I mean look at apple they said 2011 everyone will copy them and that's its year of the copycat...well we all seen ios5
My personal experience of Google employees is that they still - at least for now - believe that their organisation is a force for good in the world. There is a classic logical flow that takes place in any organisation where that belief is held. 1) We're good for the world 2) Us becoming better and with larger reach is therefore good for the world 3) therefore, what's good for us is good for the world 4) Other people may not like that we are doing 'X' but 'X' is good for us so it is good for them.
Of course people don't think that consciously, but that logic can get culturally embedded. The result is that good decent people end up doing weird things. There is also the possibility that amoral people are then drawn to the organisation's success and because they are prepared to do anything they rise up the ranks...but I don't think Google is in that phase yet.
This can have a positive ending - a company can realise that in order to build long term shareholder value it has to be socially responsible, and that will mean it has to respect wider society and influence it rather than attack it. Let's hope, eh?
Patent litigation is only "anticompetitive" for those who have chosen "copy" as their competitive approach.
tl;dr Yes
Every publicly traded company is bound to look out for its own interests (and that of its stockholders) first and foremost. That necessary selfishness leads them to do evil at least sometimes -- Apple, Google, Microsoft -- all of them. My typical App Store evil policy rants aside, Apple has, explicitly or implicitly, used child labor and fostered conditions which poisoned workers. Google, despite professing to be a champion of openness, has sold out its wireless net neutrality principles to Verizon and its free speech principles to Beijing. I'll leave MS links as an exercise for the reader, but all companies, at least after they go public, do some evil things.
Not untill they use your information or go a bit crazy like Google is doing
To everyone that complain about google having our info....they only have it cause we willingly give it...we choose to use there service...also remember a lot of company collect information now and not just google.
Patent litigation is only "anticompetitive" for those who must resort to copying in order to compete.
I think Thurrott's argument is ridiculous. Because Google built a mobile OS and is pushing the heck out of it they are now dumping. This is no different than Linux in the PC world. It is free and readily available while Apple/MSFT charges.
Dull argument!
except for the fact that linux isn't usable for regular computer users. If android required hours of fiddling with dependencies and mandatory config file editing then your analogy may work.
I can install and boot Ubuntu in less than 30 minutes without any configuration file edits. You should try it. My nephew did, non-techie 15 year old, and left Windows for it.
Regardless of ease of use, it is the exact same thing. Paid versions vs free.
Thurrott's arguments are no less cynical than say John Gruber's or Rene Ritchie's or even yours & mine. He chooses to defend his platform of choice that he makes a living working with & supporting as do we. Just different perspectives.
Gruber is a little less straight forward due to his absolute slavish love affair with Steve Jobs & all things Apple. He doesn't like to admit it & can't stand being questioned or called out over it, but it's obvious to the casual observer.
I didn't say cynical, just ridiculous. To make it a bad thing because someone else is doing for free what others get paid to do is utterly ridiculous. If it were a major issue, all pro bono lawyer work would be "dumping". Pfbt!
Yeah, Gruber is off the reservation in love w/ Apple/Jobs. See my latest blog post. ;-)
NO no no don't misunderstand. I agree with you. I may not have worded it the best. Just offering a small defense for Paul Thurrott, not like he needs it from me. He has been a tech writer I've followed, on the web & in print, for the better part of 10 yrs so I generally trust his judgement. He can however be a bit too forgiving of M$ on occasion.
Oh & I like what you wrote in that post on your blog. Spot on! You need more of the 'Editors from Tipb' to read what you write I'm thinking. ;-)
I like Thurrott too. His Windows reviews were the bomb. He just missed it on this one.
Lol @ editors reading my blog. :) Rene read the post about him/TiPB.
It is not illegal to give stuff away. It is not (always) illegal to dump. What will bring regulators around is leveraging a monopoly in one market to take over another. That is Thurott's argument.
Thurott's argument breaks down because it is not illegal to use your profits from one sector to break into another sector. Windows can fund a money-losing XBox. Apple iPods can fund iTunes. Google Search can fund Android. All of that is totally legitimate.
What is not legitimate is the tying of the two markets to break into the second one, which is the only reason Microsoft got into trouble with IE and Windows Media Player. If they tried that with XBox games today, they would get slapped down. Similar, I would bet Apple loosened restrictions on iTunes songs in part to forestall regulators. If Google Search worked only with Android, it would attract similar scrutiny. But it doesn't, so the argument does not apply.
I would agree with you if Android was walled like iOS.
I do get what you mean though.
Missed the point.
Everyone has heard the saying: ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’
Google is saying: ’Screw that! We’ll give you the cow AND the milk for free. They SHOULD be free! In fact, everyone should be drinking, and the farmers are stifling your drinking habits to line their pockets!’
‘…Want to buy a cup?’
Illegal? No.
Not until they stole the cows from the farmers.
Seriously? Wow.
What an awesome counter-argument! Well thought out and thought-provoking indeed!
Thanks. I spent some time thinking that one up. His comment was way too intelligent for me to counter.
Actually I am in Graphic Design & although a different animal from software development, we deal with trademark issues all the time. It's even got to the point were what used to be simple works cited use, like from say an orphan publication (anything that is out of print & no longer has a valid copyright for you outsiders) some company representing some nameless faceless entity somewhere is claiming some ownership rights to everything. It is in many ways a mirror of the broken patent system.
My best example is this, & it can serve as a tip for you budding authors out there. When we design ANY copy for print ads or a marketing campaign, in order to make sure that we protect ourselves from any claims of infringement by a "Fly By Night' Lodsys like troll, we enclose an original draft of the copy in an envelope & mail it to ourselves then leave it unopened. Why you might ask? The US Trademark & Patent office will recognize a postal stamp as an 'Official' recognition of validity on any claim of copyright. How ridiculous is it that we do this every time we write copy?
This sounds like the hoops everyone is jumping through in software development to not infringe on some obtuse patent claim. Everybody is guilty of it & everybody is paying the price for it.
"But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"
A broken software patent system. That is all.
A broken software system that everyone knows it needs to be sorted now but isn't....and a certain company taking advantage of it
Which company? #interested :)
Seriously, f**k off will ya with your spamming shit !!
Thurott's argument is interesting, and will probably end up in court.
Gruber's is just silly -- boiling down to "if you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear." Which is bad enough in the political arena, but in the patent sphere, it is downright absurd. Even legitimate innovators -- from Apple to Zenith -- have much to fear from the current patent system.
In software, patents are granted for such non-obvious scientific breakthroughs of a swiping gesture (Apple) (link), page up/page down (Microsoft) (link), or a social news feed (Facebook) Facebook. Even for patents that do not pass the smell test, it costs substantial money to research and defend against these patents. For a small company, it can be fatal; for a large one, it is an enormous amount of wasted time and money. These patents screw the honest inventors as much as the guilty, and stifle innovation. (While the problem is the worst in software, I have to mention my favorite non-software patent, and my personal favorite non-software example, swinging sideways on a swingset (Steven Olson) (link))
These patents are more the exception than the rule, unfortunately. As 200,000 of these "inventions" every year are patented, most companies, from Apple to Samsung to Microsoft, seem willing to play this stupid game by these stupid rules. The only way to play is to lock up your own patents for cross-licensing and countersuits, which furthers the death spiral against innovation. The cost to them, and to us, is staggering (5 minute video link). Especially in software, the patent system has metastasized into something that cripples the very innovators it was chartered to protect.
No, Google is not lilly-white here, and they are surely acting out of self-interest, but, whatever their selfish reasons, they seem to be the only company staking out territory that could to badly needed reform of the patent system.
Whoops..should read "these patents are more the rule than the exception" -- I'm sure somebody has patented the concept of proofreading, otherwise I would do it.
I'm sorry, your argument is that their doing it for the wrong reasons (and by any observation, acting uncompetitively by stealing others ideas and ground work), but maybe they'll accidentally change something that we all know will never be fixed, so it's not so bad?
Where else in life would that logic apply? If your saw someone about to steal a car, would it be 'better' if the car was parked in a handicapped zone?
That aside, read googles argument. they mention nothing about patent reform. the only thing they seek to secure is a clear slate for android so that they can continue commoditizing a market that the make no money in, so that they can sell you ads.
No one has ever accidentally changed a law. If that isn't their stated goal, it's foolishness to pat them on the back for it.
Patent reform? Which one of the collective companies [who won the patents] are talking about fixing the patent system?
You could not have missed the point more. I said Google was selfish, not wrong. Where Google is violating legitimate patents, they should pay. However, despite what you say about them stealing ideas "by any observation," but an observation that involves reading of the facts would show that in the HTC lawsuit, all but two patents have been thrown out -- 5,946,647, the rather obvious one about extracting a phone number from a string of text, and 6,343,263, one that is written so broadly that any internet connected device would violate it.
In this case, at least, Google is not wrong; those remaining two patents certainly seem bogus. But bogus or not, Google has to pay to mount a defense, and still may lose. Had Google an adequate patent arsenal of their own, they would no doubt be content to play the game conventionally, like Apple, and force some cross-licensing. Since they don't, Google is forced into taking the taking the so-called high road.
Highlighting the problems of the patent system is the right thing to do. Google is not doing this "right thing" because they are inherently good, but simply because they have no better options. That puts them accidentally on the side of the angels here -- the enemy of my enemy (a hopelessly broken patent system and the firms that take advantage of it) is my friend.
At what point did I say you called google wrong? You can be selfish, for the wrong reasons, and still be doing something that seems noble or "for the greater good."
I know that seems like a pretty meta idea. That's what metaphors were created for. To help break a difficult idea down into it's most basic parts, so that someone can view the realities of a situation objectively.
So lets look back at mine. In what way is google not the car thief? In what way is the patent system not like some bastard continually parking in a handicapped zone? It's even worse, because-metaphorically speaking- he's doing it legally.
You say: "In this case, at least, Google is not wrong; those remaining two patents certainly 'seem' bogus."
What? That's like that car thief saying: "I'm not wrong! In this case, that car seemed bogus." At what point did it become legal to break the law because something seemed 'bogus?'
Try this: Go beat up a drug dealer, then tell the cops. They try to arrest you? Oh no, tell them its cool, you were taking the high-road. And that hey, maybe you'll start a chain reaction that causes drug reform across America. Even though you couldn't care less.
Hate to break it to you, but the enemy of your enemy isn't your friend.
He's just a different kind of enemy.
In what way is google not the car thief?
Your analogies keep missing the obvious distinctions about patents -- they are licenses that must be upheld at the outset of the case, or the case is invalid. A car is does not have validity, or prior art, or an obviousness test -- it is a car, or it isn't. Patents do have to pass those tests, and, if they do not, they are disqualified. In any patent case, the defense has the opportunity to challenge those patents on any of those grounds, and get the case and the patent thrown out. You may not like it, but the legal system has a process by which patent violations are investigated.
Android is under legal pressure for two -- and currently only two -- patents that appear bogus. Guess what? Google is well within their rights to challenge the validity of those patents. That is what they are doing here.
@JackGreen83 the music industry..
Excellent article Rene! I've been making the same points to too many people to count! Of course, the ones who have iPhones agree and almost half of the ones with Android phones can only deny it for about 2-3 minutes before they give up! Google is not giving away Android because they love us so much! And the only reason that they didn't join in bidding with Apple and Microsoft is because they thought that they could have all the patents for themselves. Either that or they just like to drive up prices! Either way they lose! This is how the game is played today! You either hold the patents or you pay the holders of the patents! By holding those patents they keep Google from creating their own Internet Explorer strangle hold on the wireless community! Why else would it be "free"? Google is far from innocent. Do they really expect their competitors to do nothing? If they don't wanna play the game then they should take their ball and go home!