Google making moves to defend itself in the patent wars. Although this must make the other OEMs of android devices feel a little uneasy. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html?m=0
Google could have also defended itself by being a partner in the Novell patent acquisition. For whatever reason, they chose not to participate.
Patent wars are not a pretty thing. Everyone gets made to look like that bad guy in the end. This one will be no different.
Not sure why but on the radio this morning they said the other makers thought this could be a good thing.
It's kind of a 2 way street. On one hand, it strengthens google's patent portfolio which they desperately need right now. They and android device oems are getting sued left and right. The android device oems are getting sued because they use android and make money off of it, which means people (microsoft) are able to profit off of each android device sold. So basically they sue the oems instead of google because they can profit off of that. On the other hand, they have another competitor now that has the upper hand.
Motorola, prior to the proposed Google acquisition, was rumored to be thinking of suing other manufacturers using Android, so that may be why they're supporting this...possible that Google made some assurances to them if the deal went through.
throw a bil my way is all I'm sayin :x I've seen entire sports franchizes going for just 5% of that price!!
So this would mean Google themselves would be making phones and tablets? That's brilliant news for us Android users. I've been saying for a long time that Google needed to get more hands on with the hardware.
It's very possible, but they haven't said much on how they would operate on on this acquisition. Motorola has been pretty awesome on the build quality of their phones and they use OMAP processors in their handsets (tegra 2 in two of them though). It was only their stance on locking bootloaders and their poor motoblur overlay that stuck in their phones that made me shy away from their devices. Not sure what this would mean for their Nexus phones, but it's possible they'll leave that alone.
I just read a particularly harsh opinion about the Motorola acquisition that compares it to Microsoft switching from the PlaysForSure strategy against the iPod (we'll compete by licensing to create a lot of choices) to the Zune strategy against the iPod (we'll compete by making our own hardware).
Except that Android is absolutely raping iOS in market share, so it's a pretty silly comparison. This would be more like if that anti-trust crap had never happened, and Microsoft suddenly started making its own PCs.
Android isn't really that similar to Windows. Google doesn't try to make money from the licensing aspect (it's basically given away for free), and doesn't have the leverage against hardware vendors that MS had with Windows. Phone hardware manufacturers can add/drop OS's virtually at will, which is very different from the classic Windows model.
So what this all amounts to is the Android upgrades are free thus keeping the ominous face of anti-trust pre-occupied. And in the mean time we get the NEW Google Droid! It's NOT a new Droid, just a re-thinking of an old design ) I'm para-phrasing EVERY Google press release since Google Earth lol just fyi...)
http://www.androidcentral.com/did-apple-tamper-evidence-german-apple-v-samsung-case When apple manipulate images of competitors devices to make them look more like theirs (change aspect, remove logo, purposely open app drawer) then I say Google should do whatever it takes to fight back. HTC aren't playing nice, http://gigaom.com/apple/htc-sues-apple-over-everything/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=jkontherun
You're right. Apple obviously had to distort the truth in order to make Samsung look like they were intentionally copying successful Apple products. Samsung worked very hard to create a unique design and presentation.
Just how much different do you think tablets can look? They are big screens with some sort of rim! The Galaxy tab has a big Samsung logo and 4 buttons at the bottom and so I think both units look quite different and I can't see how Apple can own the patent to the generic tablet design. Patent law is getting more and more stupid.
Samsung had a digital photo frame out in 2006 that looks just like the tab/iPad but apparently apple had already registered thedesign for the iPad in 2004? I don't really see what they could have been registering. What if cars having four wheels or planes having two wings were owned by apple? We would be bleemed.
You're right. It's impossible for industrial designers to differentiate products. Not possible. Same thing for packaging them. Samsung had no alternative other than to create a product that looked very similar to the iPhone/iPad and put it into packaging that looked very similar to the iPhone/iPad. Case closed.