8 ms·

Google Android Director on Nexus Strategy

53 points by iProject 14y ago

thinkingthings 14y ago
Inductive charging is a really great addition if it works well. All I need now is for it to come to the iPhone!
- Evbn 14y ago
  Apple will probably invent it nearly next year.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    If they don't invent it, they'll pull the "it was immature right until we did it in the iphone" play and then call it "AirPower" or something.
    - madrona 14y ago
      "Yeah you Android fanbois are jealous about that sweet AirPower technology, huh?" "Android has had it for two years now!" "Yeah... you're jealous."
- slouch 14y ago
  What about the weekend travel scenario? Instead of bringing a wire to charge your phone, you have to pack a charging station. Is that still worth not plugging in the phone?
  - bookwormAT 14y ago
    The dock is optional. You can still use any 2€ micro USB cable to charge the Nexus 4.
cek 14y ago
If I were Samsung, and I read this, I'd dump or fork Android in a heartbeat. Google is clearly just peeing in the pool with Android. Their goal is to disrupt the industry by sucking margins out. From their perspective it makes sense. It may even be a positive thing for consumers. But it is really bad news for other companies trying to make a profit from hardware, especially Apple and Samsung.
- andybak 14y ago
  It's obvious from day one that Android was at least partially a "commoditize your complement" play. But I would argue that the emergence of a commodity alternative to Apple was inevitable and every OEM would need to choose at some point whether to play against Apple or to try and become the new Dell.
- randallu 14y ago
  I'm sure Samsung would do it if they had a modicum of competence in platform building -- see Bada, Tizen, SLP (Samsung Linux Platform). They've spent fortunes on these and gotten nowhere; they know what's going on and are completely unable to gain leverage.
  - mikeevans 14y ago
    They could always use Windows Phone 8?
  - cek 14y ago
    Completely agree on Samsung's proven incompetence in platform software. But that doesn't mean they won't try again.
crcsmnky 14y ago
"Basically we felt that we wanted to prove you don’t have to charge $600 to deliver a phone that has the latest-generation technologies." That's disingenuous. Without LTE this phone does not have the latest generation technologies. I think Google screwed up with the Nexus 4. The previous Nexus phones were definitely flagship, top of the line devices. This one is already obsolete before it even ships.
- recursive 14y ago
  Either I'm incredibly unlucky, or phone support of 4g is not the issue. I've yet to be in a city where my phone was able to connect to 4g, even though the phone itself supports it.
  - esrauch 14y ago
    Hm, are you sure you don't have 4g disabled? What provider/phone do you have? I have a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and I get 4g almost everywhere that I'm willing to call a city.
    - recursive 14y ago
      Usually, I do have it disabled, because otherwise it just wastes my battery. But I try the 4g whenever I go to a new city. I have a Motorola photon on sprint. I live in Wisconsin.
- lnanek2 14y ago
  I feel the same way about LTE myself, but they can still sell to T-mobile and most non-US markets, at least. For a while there everyone had to go Qualcomm to do LTE, which made the price very high. Only recently did Samsung manage to pair their Exynos processor with LTE and HTC managed to pair NVIDIA with LTE. The generation before that, HTC One X used Qualcomm in the US and NVIDIA in world wide edition, and Samsung also had a Qualcomm entry. Apple famously just took a really long time to go LTE. Samsung and HTC work very hard to get into carrier stores, and in the US that means LTE, so they were pretty much forced to adopt it before it was cheap and different options were competing with each other.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
The Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 are going to sell really well IMO. The Nexus 4 is the most compelling phone for anybody who prefers Android and doesn't need LTE. The Nexus 7's advantage on price and display will mean that some will prefer it to the iPad mini. But what about the Nexus 10? It's price point is high enough that the price difference against the iPad is not as significant, and it's expensive enough that you can't buy it as easily on a whim and assume that "the apps will come". It's biggest advantage against the iPad is that it has an open ecosystem, but that's not an advantage unless there are apps that take advantage of that. Any thoughts on potential "killer apps" for the Nexus 10? XBMC may be it for some. Another might be its potential as a laptop replacement for developers. Some people use an iPad for remote development, but a Nexus 10 should be powerful enough and open enough to support local development.
- scopendo 14y ago
  For my family with six kids, the killer feature is multi-user support. We have an iPad but I find I don't use it effectively because I don't stay logged into e-mail, facebook, etc. However, stubborness will probably prevent me getting one because here in the UK there is a delta of £40 between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 7, but a £70 delta between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 10 - all else being the same (I think getting a 16GB device is a bit risky with increasing app sizes).
martythemaniak 14y ago
"$299 for an unlocked Nexus 4 — I think that’s pretty revolutionary." Yep. Rather than LTE or OIS, this is in fact the killer feature of the Nexus lineup for this year and it's going to make a huge difference to a lot of people.
Terretta 14y ago
Kudos to Google for ditching the LTE buzztech in favor of better battery life and better global compatibility while offering ample bandwidth performance for a mobile device with these rendering latencies. Jeers to the blogopress for piling on iPhone 4s for making the same right call a year earlier, and to Apple for putting out iPhone 5 that is less "world compatible" than the 4s in order to offer the LTE buzztech. // disclaimer: own Google Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4s
- czhiddy 14y ago
  According to AnandTech, the Nexus 4 gets about half the battery life while browsing on 3G compared to the iPhone5 on LTE. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-10-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-...
  - pook1e 14y ago
    From the same article: > As always we test across multiple air interfaces (3G, 4G LTE, WiFi), but due to the increased network load we actually find that on a given process technology we see an increase in battery life on faster network connections. The why is quite simple to understand: the faster a page is able to fully render, the quicker all components can drive down to their idle power states. If you compare the Nexus 4 on 3G (4.18) and the iPhone 5 on 3G (4.55), the scores are actually very close.
    - czhiddy 14y ago
      The post I was responding to praised Google for ditching LTE buzztech in favor of (among other things) better battery life. Real world data shows that this isn't the case - the "buzztech" actually provides an enormous boost to battery life.
      - pook1e 14y ago
        I'd be very careful claiming that LTE provides an "enormous boost to battery life" based on a benchmark that loads web pages at a fixed interval, with fixed brightness, and with minimal caching. In this particular benchmark, it is very clear that LTE is the winner across the board. In 'real world usage', I have to disagree. I'm sure anyone with an LTE phone will tell you that disabling the LTE radio absolutely gives a boost in day-to-day battery life.
cletus 14y ago
As an aside, the title is a little misleading. I was expecting this to be Andy Rubin. But that's a minor nitpick. I, for one, am very pleased with this Nexus lineup (disclaimer: I work for Google). The Nexus 4 for $299-349 seems to be outstanding value given the competition is typically ~$600 unsubsidized. I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature, to the point I'm almost surprised Apple has adopted them. I don't know what they add in cost but they certainly, by all accounts, drain battery life. The Nexus 7 for $199 seems to be outstanding value. Google Play isn't quite the iTunes ecosystem yet but it's getting much better. I also think it's better than an iPad Mini in that it's widescreen not 4:3. I've lined up a Nexus 7 against my iPad playing Netflix. Playing widescreen the Nexus 7 is only marginally smaller. 720p seems to be a good baseline to aim for on this size of device (IMHO). I'm also pleased to see the Nexus 10 for $399. It looks like a very nice device. I also think Android is starting to coming into its own. I've often been critical of it compared to the consistency, ease of use and general pleasure of iOS but that shortcoming is rapidly disappearing. I compare it to the Motorola Droid, which I have. It's a terrible phone. Everything about it is just bad. My only gripe with Android phones these days is that they continue to get bigger. I like the form factor of my iPhone 4S. Plus the Nexus devices has the vastly superior Google Maps. :_ I for one like having public transit directions on my maps.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature Not to mention the speeds with LTE are not actually that much faster than T-Mo's HSPA+, especially now that there are lots of iPhone 5s in the wild using up LTE bandwidth: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-verge-and-lte http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-v... (the data in the post is pre-iPhone 5, so the LTE speeds will be much slower than even that now)
  - BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
    IMO at this point, new wireless networking technology is mostly a feature for carriers not for users. It allows them to sell more devices. Sure it's nice for users when they are first in an empty network but you have to be aware that carriers are working as hard as they can to sell their bandwidth and take it away from you. It always puzzles me that they advertise their new network as a feature to users when it's at best a temporary one. If they were to give guarantees that they wouldn't oversaturate their network with too many users THAT would be worth something and would be a feature to advertise. If all they sell is LTE phones this year, the other networks will actually become the fast ones as devices are retired from them and the bandwidth is freed.
jonathansizz 14y ago
I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio (like the forthcoming Nexus 7) could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device? The form factor seems to be right in the sweet spot for portability versus usability, i.e. it's much less bulky than a full-size tablet, is much less expensive and also offers substantially better battery life, whilst retaining a screen large enough for pleasant video watching, gaming and especially web browsing and ebook reading, criteria which even the largest smartphone cannot compete with. I'd love it if there was a Nexus 6.5 and a Nexus 6 to compare with the Nexus 7 though, as I think 7" is definitely right at the upper end of the ideal size range.
- hollerith 14y ago
  >I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device? You are not the only one: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-7-is-almost-the-only-device-i-need/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-... An important constraint IMHO is whether the user can pick it up with one hand when the device is lying flat on a horizontal surface. The iPad does not meet this constraint: although my hands are very large compared to most men's and although I can technically pick up an iPad this way, doing so is very uncomfortable and my grip cannot be particularly secure. Even the Surface RT is smaller (.54 inches smaller to be exact) in the relevant dimension (the dimension that has to be spanned by thumb and middle finger) despite its screen having 1.166 times as much area as the iPad's. (This is possible since the Surface RT has an 16:9 aspect ratio versus the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad). ADDED. Most heavy users of computers will of course want at least one device that meets that constraint (namely, being able to be picked up and held comfortably with one hand) e.g., a smartphone or a 7" tablet or a 7.7" tablet (like the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 or the Toshiba Excite 7 -- the only 2 shipping tablets with AMOLED btw) or (if they have big hands) a 7.9" 4:3 tablet (the iPad mini). I predict that in the years to come many of them who want a second, bigger mobile device will prefer a device with a 11.6" screen (like the small Macbook Air or one of the many Windows 8 tablets with an Atom or Intel Core processor) or a 13.3" screen (like a lot of popular clamshells or the announced-but-not-yet-available Android-ARM-powered Toshiba Excite 13 tablet) over an Asus Transformer (with their 10.1" screens) or an iPad (with their 9.7" screens).
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Anyone else find the use of "the Cupertino guys" just odd? What's he trying to achieve by not mentioning Apple? It's not as if anyone interested in the article wouldn't know exactly who he's referring to. That said when discussing tablets not sure whether the Seattle guys are Microsoft or Amazon... Otherwise interesting piece - in tone the price pitch feels a lot like Amazon when they talk tablets.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  That's a good point about Seattle, since he's clearly talking about MSFT (Amazon's devices are dirt cheap), so the ambiguity is actually quite counterproductive.
hkmurakami 14y ago
>There are players in the industry who were unhappy about more competitive pricing for the consumers. They want to keep the prices high, they want to force the price to be so high that operators have to subsidize the devices very highly. That’s not only the Cupertino guys but also for the guys up in Seattle. They want higher margins, they want to charge more for software. We simply believe there’s a better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users, because there are other ways to drive revenues. Patents were used as a weapon to try to stop that evolution and scare people away from lower-cost alternatives. Of course it's Google, the only company other than Amazon with such a non-SW/HW revenue stream that takes this position. (Google's revenue stream being ads, and Amazon's being content)

53 points by iProject 14y ago

thinkingthings 14y ago

Inductive charging is a really great addition if it works well. All I need now is for it to come to the iPhone!

Evbn 14y ago
Apple will probably invent it nearly next year.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  If they don't invent it, they'll pull the "it was immature right until we did it in the iphone" play and then call it "AirPower" or something.
  - madrona 14y ago
    "Yeah you Android fanbois are jealous about that sweet AirPower technology, huh?" "Android has had it for two years now!" "Yeah... you're jealous."
slouch 14y ago
What about the weekend travel scenario? Instead of bringing a wire to charge your phone, you have to pack a charging station. Is that still worth not plugging in the phone?
- bookwormAT 14y ago
  The dock is optional. You can still use any 2€ micro USB cable to charge the Nexus 4.

cek 14y ago

If I were Samsung, and I read this, I'd dump or fork Android in a heartbeat. Google is clearly just peeing in the pool with Android. Their goal is to disrupt the industry by sucking margins out. From their perspective it makes sense. It may even be a positive thing for consumers. But it is really bad news for other companies trying to make a profit from hardware, especially Apple and Samsung.

andybak 14y ago
It's obvious from day one that Android was at least partially a "commoditize your complement" play. But I would argue that the emergence of a commodity alternative to Apple was inevitable and every OEM would need to choose at some point whether to play against Apple or to try and become the new Dell.
randallu 14y ago
I'm sure Samsung would do it if they had a modicum of competence in platform building -- see Bada, Tizen, SLP (Samsung Linux Platform). They've spent fortunes on these and gotten nowhere; they know what's going on and are completely unable to gain leverage.
- mikeevans 14y ago
  They could always use Windows Phone 8?
- cek 14y ago
  Completely agree on Samsung's proven incompetence in platform software. But that doesn't mean they won't try again.

crcsmnky 14y ago

"Basically we felt that we wanted to prove you don’t have to charge $600 to deliver a phone that has the latest-generation technologies." That's disingenuous. Without LTE this phone does not have the latest generation technologies. I think Google screwed up with the Nexus 4. The previous Nexus phones were definitely flagship, top of the line devices. This one is already obsolete before it even ships.

recursive 14y ago
Either I'm incredibly unlucky, or phone support of 4g is not the issue. I've yet to be in a city where my phone was able to connect to 4g, even though the phone itself supports it.
- esrauch 14y ago
  Hm, are you sure you don't have 4g disabled? What provider/phone do you have? I have a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and I get 4g almost everywhere that I'm willing to call a city.
  - recursive 14y ago
    Usually, I do have it disabled, because otherwise it just wastes my battery. But I try the 4g whenever I go to a new city. I have a Motorola photon on sprint. I live in Wisconsin.
lnanek2 14y ago
I feel the same way about LTE myself, but they can still sell to T-mobile and most non-US markets, at least. For a while there everyone had to go Qualcomm to do LTE, which made the price very high. Only recently did Samsung manage to pair their Exynos processor with LTE and HTC managed to pair NVIDIA with LTE. The generation before that, HTC One X used Qualcomm in the US and NVIDIA in world wide edition, and Samsung also had a Qualcomm entry. Apple famously just took a really long time to go LTE. Samsung and HTC work very hard to get into carrier stores, and in the US that means LTE, so they were pretty much forced to adopt it before it was cheap and different options were competing with each other.

bryanlarsen 14y ago

The Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 are going to sell really well IMO. The Nexus 4 is the most compelling phone for anybody who prefers Android and doesn't need LTE. The Nexus 7's advantage on price and display will mean that some will prefer it to the iPad mini. But what about the Nexus 10? It's price point is high enough that the price difference against the iPad is not as significant, and it's expensive enough that you can't buy it as easily on a whim and assume that "the apps will come". It's biggest advantage against the iPad is that it has an open ecosystem, but that's not an advantage unless there are apps that take advantage of that. Any thoughts on potential "killer apps" for the Nexus 10? XBMC may be it for some. Another might be its potential as a laptop replacement for developers. Some people use an iPad for remote development, but a Nexus 10 should be powerful enough and open enough to support local development.

scopendo 14y ago
For my family with six kids, the killer feature is multi-user support. We have an iPad but I find I don't use it effectively because I don't stay logged into e-mail, facebook, etc. However, stubborness will probably prevent me getting one because here in the UK there is a delta of £40 between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 7, but a £70 delta between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 10 - all else being the same (I think getting a 16GB device is a bit risky with increasing app sizes).

martythemaniak 14y ago

"$299 for an unlocked Nexus 4 — I think that’s pretty revolutionary." Yep. Rather than LTE or OIS, this is in fact the killer feature of the Nexus lineup for this year and it's going to make a huge difference to a lot of people.

Terretta 14y ago

Kudos to Google for ditching the LTE buzztech in favor of better battery life and better global compatibility while offering ample bandwidth performance for a mobile device with these rendering latencies. Jeers to the blogopress for piling on iPhone 4s for making the same right call a year earlier, and to Apple for putting out iPhone 5 that is less "world compatible" than the 4s in order to offer the LTE buzztech. // disclaimer: own Google Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4s

czhiddy 14y ago
According to AnandTech, the Nexus 4 gets about half the battery life while browsing on 3G compared to the iPhone5 on LTE. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-10-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-...
- pook1e 14y ago
  From the same article: > As always we test across multiple air interfaces (3G, 4G LTE, WiFi), but due to the increased network load we actually find that on a given process technology we see an increase in battery life on faster network connections. The why is quite simple to understand: the faster a page is able to fully render, the quicker all components can drive down to their idle power states. If you compare the Nexus 4 on 3G (4.18) and the iPhone 5 on 3G (4.55), the scores are actually very close.
  - czhiddy 14y ago
    The post I was responding to praised Google for ditching LTE buzztech in favor of (among other things) better battery life. Real world data shows that this isn't the case - the "buzztech" actually provides an enormous boost to battery life.
    - pook1e 14y ago
      I'd be very careful claiming that LTE provides an "enormous boost to battery life" based on a benchmark that loads web pages at a fixed interval, with fixed brightness, and with minimal caching. In this particular benchmark, it is very clear that LTE is the winner across the board. In 'real world usage', I have to disagree. I'm sure anyone with an LTE phone will tell you that disabling the LTE radio absolutely gives a boost in day-to-day battery life.

cletus 14y ago

As an aside, the title is a little misleading. I was expecting this to be Andy Rubin. But that's a minor nitpick. I, for one, am very pleased with this Nexus lineup (disclaimer: I work for Google). The Nexus 4 for $299-349 seems to be outstanding value given the competition is typically ~$600 unsubsidized. I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature, to the point I'm almost surprised Apple has adopted them. I don't know what they add in cost but they certainly, by all accounts, drain battery life. The Nexus 7 for $199 seems to be outstanding value. Google Play isn't quite the iTunes ecosystem yet but it's getting much better. I also think it's better than an iPad Mini in that it's widescreen not 4:3. I've lined up a Nexus 7 against my iPad playing Netflix. Playing widescreen the Nexus 7 is only marginally smaller. 720p seems to be a good baseline to aim for on this size of device (IMHO). I'm also pleased to see the Nexus 10 for $399. It looks like a very nice device. I also think Android is starting to coming into its own. I've often been critical of it compared to the consistency, ease of use and general pleasure of iOS but that shortcoming is rapidly disappearing. I compare it to the Motorola Droid, which I have. It's a terrible phone. Everything about it is just bad. My only gripe with Android phones these days is that they continue to get bigger. I like the form factor of my iPhone 4S. Plus the Nexus devices has the vastly superior Google Maps. :_ I for one like having public transit directions on my maps.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature Not to mention the speeds with LTE are not actually that much faster than T-Mo's HSPA+, especially now that there are lots of iPhone 5s in the wild using up LTE bandwidth: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-verge-and-lte http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-v... (the data in the post is pre-iPhone 5, so the LTE speeds will be much slower than even that now)
- BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
  IMO at this point, new wireless networking technology is mostly a feature for carriers not for users. It allows them to sell more devices. Sure it's nice for users when they are first in an empty network but you have to be aware that carriers are working as hard as they can to sell their bandwidth and take it away from you. It always puzzles me that they advertise their new network as a feature to users when it's at best a temporary one. If they were to give guarantees that they wouldn't oversaturate their network with too many users THAT would be worth something and would be a feature to advertise. If all they sell is LTE phones this year, the other networks will actually become the fast ones as devices are retired from them and the bandwidth is freed.

jonathansizz 14y ago

I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio (like the forthcoming Nexus 7) could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device? The form factor seems to be right in the sweet spot for portability versus usability, i.e. it's much less bulky than a full-size tablet, is much less expensive and also offers substantially better battery life, whilst retaining a screen large enough for pleasant video watching, gaming and especially web browsing and ebook reading, criteria which even the largest smartphone cannot compete with. I'd love it if there was a Nexus 6.5 and a Nexus 6 to compare with the Nexus 7 though, as I think 7" is definitely right at the upper end of the ideal size range.

hollerith 14y ago
>I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device? You are not the only one: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-7-is-almost-the-only-device-i-need/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-... An important constraint IMHO is whether the user can pick it up with one hand when the device is lying flat on a horizontal surface. The iPad does not meet this constraint: although my hands are very large compared to most men's and although I can technically pick up an iPad this way, doing so is very uncomfortable and my grip cannot be particularly secure. Even the Surface RT is smaller (.54 inches smaller to be exact) in the relevant dimension (the dimension that has to be spanned by thumb and middle finger) despite its screen having 1.166 times as much area as the iPad's. (This is possible since the Surface RT has an 16:9 aspect ratio versus the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad). ADDED. Most heavy users of computers will of course want at least one device that meets that constraint (namely, being able to be picked up and held comfortably with one hand) e.g., a smartphone or a 7" tablet or a 7.7" tablet (like the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 or the Toshiba Excite 7 -- the only 2 shipping tablets with AMOLED btw) or (if they have big hands) a 7.9" 4:3 tablet (the iPad mini). I predict that in the years to come many of them who want a second, bigger mobile device will prefer a device with a 11.6" screen (like the small Macbook Air or one of the many Windows 8 tablets with an Atom or Intel Core processor) or a 13.3" screen (like a lot of popular clamshells or the announced-but-not-yet-available Android-ARM-powered Toshiba Excite 13 tablet) over an Asus Transformer (with their 10.1" screens) or an iPad (with their 9.7" screens).

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

Anyone else find the use of "the Cupertino guys" just odd? What's he trying to achieve by not mentioning Apple? It's not as if anyone interested in the article wouldn't know exactly who he's referring to. That said when discussing tablets not sure whether the Seattle guys are Microsoft or Amazon... Otherwise interesting piece - in tone the price pitch feels a lot like Amazon when they talk tablets.

hkmurakami 14y ago
That's a good point about Seattle, since he's clearly talking about MSFT (Amazon's devices are dirt cheap), so the ambiguity is actually quite counterproductive.

hkmurakami 14y ago

>There are players in the industry who were unhappy about more competitive pricing for the consumers. They want to keep the prices high, they want to force the price to be so high that operators have to subsidize the devices very highly. That’s not only the Cupertino guys but also for the guys up in Seattle. They want higher margins, they want to charge more for software. We simply believe there’s a better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users, because there are other ways to drive revenues. Patents were used as a weapon to try to stop that evolution and scare people away from lower-cost alternatives. Of course it's Google, the only company other than Amazon with such a non-SW/HW revenue stream that takes this position. (Google's revenue stream being ads, and Amazon's being content)