I posted a little while ago that Google has very few patents of it's own - only about 600 that I can find. Apple has about 3700, Microsoft about 17000. HTC has

I posted a little while ago that Google has very few patents of it's own - only about 600 that I can find. Apple has about 3700, Microsoft about 17000. HTC has next to none. Now Google wants to spend a billion dollars to buy 6000 Nortel patents. I guess Google learned that you don't bring smart employees, a sane corporate culture, genuine innovation, and a good reputation among your customers to a patent fight. Another interesting angle to this whole patent auction going on here in canuckistan is going to be Google vs. Huawei. Both of these companies are in the telecom sector, both of them have a metric ton of money (although maybe Huawei has the advantage here - theirs is pretty much guaranteed by the Chinese treasury, in spite of whatever ridiculous claims of independence they've made), both of them are competing with established players with huge patent portfolios, but neither of them have many patents themselves. Huawei has already made it known that they want those patents too. We'll see how this turns out.