12 ms·

It's weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he's not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something tha

It's weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he's not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that's so self-evident? His arguments here are just so disingenuous. "So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK." Yes, because Google isn't forming a cartel to stifle competition. "It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?" Yes, because Google isn't using an artificial barrier (the patent system). And because those patents are bogus. Because most, if not all, software patents are bogus. That's pretty clearly Google's stated position. "First, the “estimate” of $1 billion was partially set by Google itself." But there's no denying that this is by several times the largest amount ever paid for a patent portfolio. "They’re effectively arguing against the idea of the patent system itself, simply because Android violates a bunch of patents held by Google’s competitors." Yes they are arguing against the patent system, at least for software, as do many in the industry. There's nothing hypocritical about that. "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?" This argument betrays either a very weak understanding of how defensive patents work or a deep dishonesty of argumentation. Maybe both. This argument can be applied to the very idea of defensive patents. It's conflicting that someone who's so obviously intelligent and often terribly insightful (not to mention witty) can be so willfully dishonest. I'm going to back to only reading Gruber's writing on Apple, and ignoring his writing on anything else.

bonch 15y ago
I agree with Gruber's position here, actually, but it's true that Daring Fireball is like Gruber's little utopia where the following things are true: 1.) Apple products are always awesome. 2.) Democrats are always right, and here's yet another Paul Krugman article. 3.) The Yankees rule.
blutonium 15y ago
That was Benjamin and Arment, not Gruber.
sasidharm 15y ago
Gruber is no Google-lover, but in this case he is right on the money for calling out Google's hypocrisy. What if Google won the Nortel patents with their pi billion dollars bid?
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Then they would have unhypocrytically continued to use them only defensively. Can you explain exactly how Google is being hypocritical in this case?
  - sasidharm 15y ago
    They are being hypocritical by saying that Apple and Msft bid many more times than what those patents are really worth, when Google itself bid upto 4 billion dollars. And what gaurantee does Google provide that they wouldn't sue competitors aggressively? Dont tell me its because their 'motto' is Dont be evil.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      >And what gaurantee does Google provide that they wouldn't sue competitors aggressively? So they are hypocritical because of something they haven't done? By that logic, everyone is an hypocrite. Has Google ever actually sued competitors aggressively? Not that I know of.
    - Rusky 15y ago
      The difference is that even if Google were to try to use those patents offensively against Apple and Microsoft, they probably wouldn't have much of an impact- Google's motivation was defensive, and they pretty much had to try for those patents. On the other hand, Apple and Microsoft are /already/ having an impact on Android and these patents would only strengthen them- their motivation was offensive and they were the ones who inflated the prices just to hurt Google.
- yanw 15y ago
  Then it would be perfectly fine, they would be able to stop Microsoft and its elk from extorting patent fees, but the whole issue lies in that the patent went to Microsoft and Apple and others like them for the sole purpose of extorting Android.
AllenKids 15y ago
To stifle competition one not necessarily needs to form a cartel. To stifle competition one can simply flood the market with goods priced under cost. Besides, Google formed a cartel with Intel, they lost.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 15y ago
  Android is not priced under cost, it just has a different revenue model. Stifling competition happens when a company uses their cash reserves to sustain a product which is losing money, forcing smaller companies to leave the market. This is not what they're doing, at all.
Lewisham 15y ago
I used to really like Gruber, but he's become a very twisted orator, who seems to bend everything to Apple's favor. Maybe he was always that way, and when Apple was the underdog, it felt more like cheerleading than dishonesty. I felt a decent amount of relief when I dropped him from my RSS reader.
- hn_decay 15y ago
  He recently posted a link to a story about Amazon removing the various buy bits from their app, which the snarky commentary "That wasn't hard, was it?" A few hours later he completely changed position to one where he was mildly critical of Apple for making the app less user friendly. I suspect his overwhelming bias just became too strong for even him to bear.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    Ouch. That's pretty bad. Do you know if anything captured the change (Google cache, Internet Archive, etc.)?
evmar 15y ago
I think it's a bit unfair to call him willfully dishonest. I find Gruber's writing really fascinating in that he's clearly intelligent but he appears to have no awareness of the way he twists things like this. It seems more likely to me that he is a case study in cognitive dissonance.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  I'd look at hn_decay's comment about Gruber's response to the Amazon "buy button removal". That's getting pretty close to willful in my book (especially since he made the change without noting it).
danilocampos 15y ago
"Yes, because Google isn't forming a cartel to stifle competition." Hmm. I'm not so sure. There's a way to see Google's behavior where what they're doing is precisely that. Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out – or prevented from entering, since they couldn't recoup the costs involved in developing a product. In league with their manufacturing partners, Google has their own cartel, attempting to homogenize the smartphone landscape under a single, free OS. The incentives are obvious: it's much easier for Google to make its ad money if it controls the next big platform. They may have dressed it up as pious and open – but for their purposes, it's a land grab. Is it anticompetitive? I'm not sure. My antitrust scholarship began and ended with The Microsoft File back in the 90's. But I'm also not sure it's any better than whatever satanic pact they are intimating has been formed by Apple and Microsoft. Google's argument here is summed up as "You could trust us with those patents. But we didn't get them. You can't trust the guys who did get them." I'm pretty sure at this scale, with this much cash on the line, business just doesn't work that way. Google will run over anyone to keep their ad money flowing, just as Microsoft will run over anyone to keep their license money flowing. Why should we side with one cause over the other?
- joebadmo 15y ago
  That argument is fair and interesting, but it has no bearing on the current issue: "So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK." It's in no way hypocritical for Google to try to acquire the patents and then, on subsequent failure, condemn their acquisition by the opposing consortium. I'd be willing to entertain arguments along the lines of Google's anti-competitive behavior, but I find their stance on patents is cogent and consistent. I find Gruber's argument to be, OTOH, totally disingenuous.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  > Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out This is what happens when innovation threatens dinosaurs. Phrases such as "predatory pricing" exemplifies a fundamental misunderstanding of how pricing works, or markets in general. People forget the whole point of the market is to serve the consumer. The point of the market is not to protect the interests of old tech giants because they can't compete with free. They're willing to prevent consumers from enjoying the satisfaction that Android has to offer because they want money for doing what Google offers for free. By this logic I should start a search engine that charges $10 a search, then sue google for anti-competitive practice. Everything about business is predatory. Every time a company releases a better product it is predatory to their competition. Offering an edge your competitors can't handle is kind of the point. If Google's pricing is so "predatory", why doesn't the competition do the same? Because they're ethical?
tolmasky 15y ago
Its particularly strange because he himself has linked to the NPR story: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/25/when-patents-attack http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/25/when-patents-att... It would seem like someone who links to that (and apparently agrees with it), would not say something like "But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"
- Elepsis 15y ago
  It isn't inconsistent to be opposed to patent trolls without being opposed to patents in general.
  - tolmasky 15y ago
    His comment was specifically criticizing Google's position of wanting to have defensive patents: 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? He is basically scoffing at the very idea of defensive patents. Someone who understands and accepts the concept of patent trolls should also understand the strategy of defensive patents and shouldn't hand wave it away. This should be particularly obvious in the Nortel case because everyone was theoretically an infringer until the very moment that someone won the bid, at which point the winner magically becomes non-infringing and the loser is all of a sudden an "idea stealer". Just think about it this way: had Lodsys or Intellectual Ventures been able to afford Nortel's patent portfolio they'd be suing everyone right now and I can guarantee Gruber would not be saying "well, Apple did violate actual patents", instead he'd be calling it patent trolling.
    - Elepsis 15y ago
      Isn't the whole problem with patent trolls that defensive patents don't protect you against them? For better or worse, the current system is largely based around mutually assured destruction. The patent trolls don't make any products, so they don't actually have anything to lose from the assertion of these defensive patents against them. It seems like what Gruber is actually saying is that the patents Google is violating are legitimate, invented and/or owned by companies that are actively making products based on those patents. The fact that some of those companies (Apple, for instance) may choose to then enforce their intellectual rights doesn't make them patent trolls; having your company's sole business be suing people over violations of patents you purchase makes a company a patent troll.
olalonde 15y ago
> It's weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he's not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that's so self-evident? Because he's not really anti-Google, he's just pro-Apple (read Apple fanboy).

bonch 15y ago

I agree with Gruber's position here, actually, but it's true that Daring Fireball is like Gruber's little utopia where the following things are true: 1.) Apple products are always awesome. 2.) Democrats are always right, and here's yet another Paul Krugman article. 3.) The Yankees rule.

blutonium 15y ago

That was Benjamin and Arment, not Gruber.

sasidharm 15y ago

Gruber is no Google-lover, but in this case he is right on the money for calling out Google's hypocrisy. What if Google won the Nortel patents with their pi billion dollars bid?

joebadmo 15y ago
Then they would have unhypocrytically continued to use them only defensively. Can you explain exactly how Google is being hypocritical in this case?
- sasidharm 15y ago
  They are being hypocritical by saying that Apple and Msft bid many more times than what those patents are really worth, when Google itself bid upto 4 billion dollars. And what gaurantee does Google provide that they wouldn't sue competitors aggressively? Dont tell me its because their 'motto' is Dont be evil.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    >And what gaurantee does Google provide that they wouldn't sue competitors aggressively? So they are hypocritical because of something they haven't done? By that logic, everyone is an hypocrite. Has Google ever actually sued competitors aggressively? Not that I know of.
  - Rusky 15y ago
    The difference is that even if Google were to try to use those patents offensively against Apple and Microsoft, they probably wouldn't have much of an impact- Google's motivation was defensive, and they pretty much had to try for those patents. On the other hand, Apple and Microsoft are /already/ having an impact on Android and these patents would only strengthen them- their motivation was offensive and they were the ones who inflated the prices just to hurt Google.
yanw 15y ago
Then it would be perfectly fine, they would be able to stop Microsoft and its elk from extorting patent fees, but the whole issue lies in that the patent went to Microsoft and Apple and others like them for the sole purpose of extorting Android.

AllenKids 15y ago

To stifle competition one not necessarily needs to form a cartel. To stifle competition one can simply flood the market with goods priced under cost. Besides, Google formed a cartel with Intel, they lost.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 15y ago
Android is not priced under cost, it just has a different revenue model. Stifling competition happens when a company uses their cash reserves to sustain a product which is losing money, forcing smaller companies to leave the market. This is not what they're doing, at all.

Lewisham 15y ago

I used to really like Gruber, but he's become a very twisted orator, who seems to bend everything to Apple's favor. Maybe he was always that way, and when Apple was the underdog, it felt more like cheerleading than dishonesty. I felt a decent amount of relief when I dropped him from my RSS reader.

hn_decay 15y ago
He recently posted a link to a story about Amazon removing the various buy bits from their app, which the snarky commentary "That wasn't hard, was it?" A few hours later he completely changed position to one where he was mildly critical of Apple for making the app less user friendly. I suspect his overwhelming bias just became too strong for even him to bear.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  Ouch. That's pretty bad. Do you know if anything captured the change (Google cache, Internet Archive, etc.)?

evmar 15y ago

I think it's a bit unfair to call him willfully dishonest. I find Gruber's writing really fascinating in that he's clearly intelligent but he appears to have no awareness of the way he twists things like this. It seems more likely to me that he is a case study in cognitive dissonance.

fpgeek 15y ago
I'd look at hn_decay's comment about Gruber's response to the Amazon "buy button removal". That's getting pretty close to willful in my book (especially since he made the change without noting it).

danilocampos 15y ago

"Yes, because Google isn't forming a cartel to stifle competition." Hmm. I'm not so sure. There's a way to see Google's behavior where what they're doing is precisely that. Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out – or prevented from entering, since they couldn't recoup the costs involved in developing a product. In league with their manufacturing partners, Google has their own cartel, attempting to homogenize the smartphone landscape under a single, free OS. The incentives are obvious: it's much easier for Google to make its ad money if it controls the next big platform. They may have dressed it up as pious and open – but for their purposes, it's a land grab. Is it anticompetitive? I'm not sure. My antitrust scholarship began and ended with The Microsoft File back in the 90's. But I'm also not sure it's any better than whatever satanic pact they are intimating has been formed by Apple and Microsoft. Google's argument here is summed up as "You could trust us with those patents. But we didn't get them. You can't trust the guys who did get them." I'm pretty sure at this scale, with this much cash on the line, business just doesn't work that way. Google will run over anyone to keep their ad money flowing, just as Microsoft will run over anyone to keep their license money flowing. Why should we side with one cause over the other?

joebadmo 15y ago
That argument is fair and interesting, but it has no bearing on the current issue: "So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK." It's in no way hypocritical for Google to try to acquire the patents and then, on subsequent failure, condemn their acquisition by the opposing consortium. I'd be willing to entertain arguments along the lines of Google's anti-competitive behavior, but I find their stance on patents is cogent and consistent. I find Gruber's argument to be, OTOH, totally disingenuous.
smokeyj 15y ago
> Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out This is what happens when innovation threatens dinosaurs. Phrases such as "predatory pricing" exemplifies a fundamental misunderstanding of how pricing works, or markets in general. People forget the whole point of the market is to serve the consumer. The point of the market is not to protect the interests of old tech giants because they can't compete with free. They're willing to prevent consumers from enjoying the satisfaction that Android has to offer because they want money for doing what Google offers for free. By this logic I should start a search engine that charges $10 a search, then sue google for anti-competitive practice. Everything about business is predatory. Every time a company releases a better product it is predatory to their competition. Offering an edge your competitors can't handle is kind of the point. If Google's pricing is so "predatory", why doesn't the competition do the same? Because they're ethical?

tolmasky 15y ago

Its particularly strange because he himself has linked to the NPR story: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/25/when-patents-attack http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/25/when-patents-att... It would seem like someone who links to that (and apparently agrees with it), would not say something like "But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"

Elepsis 15y ago
It isn't inconsistent to be opposed to patent trolls without being opposed to patents in general.
- tolmasky 15y ago
  His comment was specifically criticizing Google's position of wanting to have defensive patents: 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? He is basically scoffing at the very idea of defensive patents. Someone who understands and accepts the concept of patent trolls should also understand the strategy of defensive patents and shouldn't hand wave it away. This should be particularly obvious in the Nortel case because everyone was theoretically an infringer until the very moment that someone won the bid, at which point the winner magically becomes non-infringing and the loser is all of a sudden an "idea stealer". Just think about it this way: had Lodsys or Intellectual Ventures been able to afford Nortel's patent portfolio they'd be suing everyone right now and I can guarantee Gruber would not be saying "well, Apple did violate actual patents", instead he'd be calling it patent trolling.
  - Elepsis 15y ago
    Isn't the whole problem with patent trolls that defensive patents don't protect you against them? For better or worse, the current system is largely based around mutually assured destruction. The patent trolls don't make any products, so they don't actually have anything to lose from the assertion of these defensive patents against them. It seems like what Gruber is actually saying is that the patents Google is violating are legitimate, invented and/or owned by companies that are actively making products based on those patents. The fact that some of those companies (Apple, for instance) may choose to then enforce their intellectual rights doesn't make them patent trolls; having your company's sole business be suing people over violations of patents you purchase makes a company a patent troll.

olalonde 15y ago

> It's weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he's not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that's so self-evident? Because he's not really anti-Google, he's just pro-Apple (read Apple fanboy).