throwawaykf02

To save everyone the time, here's a typical Internet thread about Stallman:

- He's crazy!

- But he's right!

- Right? He's just been stating the obvious all this time!

- NSA surveillance!

- Hadn't anyone heard about Echelon?

- He stands for freedom of users!

- But users don't care about those freedoms, they just want something that works!

- He's antisocial and extremely rude!

- Autism spectrum.

- But he's not diplomatic at all, we don't want him as a spokesperson for Open Source!

- It's GNU/Linux, not Linux.

- See? It's nitpicking things like GNU/Linux that make even open source enthusiasts hate him!

- Only the userland is GNU anyway.

- GPL!

- Emacs!

- GCC!

- HURD!

- Toejam.

> Microsoft was hated because they aggressively pushed out competitors in dishonest ways, because they intentionally made it difficult to interoperate with their software through proprietary protocols and file formats, and because they attacked open source.

To me that sounds a lot like "throwing their weight around" :-) As my post hoped to show, Google simply does it in different ways.

Well... if you believe Yelp, the SkyHook lawsuit and various antitrust complaints in the US and EU, "pushing out competitors in dishonest ways" is something Google is doing as well. And we all know how interoperable YouTube is with Windows Phone devices. And we saw how Google pressured OEMs into not supporting competing software (cf SkyHook, Acer).

So maybe not that different after all.

> Some of your questions directly illustrate why "throwing your weight around" can be a good thing.

No doubt Microsoft supporters will say the same thing about Microsoft's antics :-)

> Did Sun/Oracle accuse Google of "stealing" Java? Yes, but do you really want to live in a world where people can copyright APIs, thereby giving creators of popular APIs a large amount of control over everyone else?

Well, that's the purpose of IP, isn't it? If you create something popular that others find very useful, you deserve enough control to ensure proper compensation.

Otherwise you get what Google did to Sun. Sun sank millions in developing -- and billions in marketing -- Java to make it the dominant development language that it is and to create, out of nothing, a huge Java-savvy workforce. Google, to bring developers to their new platform, simply hijacked the ecosystem with nothing in return to Sun (now Oracle). Of course, Sun was very careless in its control of Java, but I think Google derived immense benefit from Sun's investment and is being extremely selfish in insisting on not respecting their rights.

> I surely don't (and I say this as someone who has dedicated literally years of my life into designing APIs) but Oracle and Microsoft would like that world.

I too have devoted years of my life designing APIs. I see little distinction in the creative effort that goes into either code or API, and I think both deserve equal protection.

In fact, personally, I see Google's world as worse than Oracle/Microsoft's world. Google's arguments in the Oracle case, taken to their logical conclusion, literally remove support for all copyright protection for software. Part of their argument is that APIs are not copyrightable because they're "functional". You know what else is functional? All the code in the world!

But then, Google's software remains locked away in data centers, away from the world's eyes, further protected by trade secret. Of course, it sees no value in other types of protection, only liabilities.

Me, I'd rather live in a world where valuable works cannot be taken without permission, especially since a lot of my work is exposed to the world. I've open sourced a lot of stuff too, but which of my work can be taken freely should always be my decision.

> I don't "expect" Microsoft to give away anything, but the fact that their business model depends on tightly controlling it makes them an inherently less open source-friendly company than Google.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a "less open source-friendly company" either.

> This somehow makes Google like 90's Microsoft?

You should have stopped there. Removing Cyanogenmod may not be it, but the rest of your post just opens it up for pointing out how Google is just like Microsoft.

> How many operating systems or web browsers did Microsoft open-source?

Red herring. Selling software and Operating Systems is Microsoft's core business, and you expect them to give it away? How much software that is the core of Google's business has Google given away? I see nothing of the search, advertising and distributed systems infrastructure being open sourced.

> How many forks of their software did Microsoft tolerate?

Hah, why don't we ask Acer that? The moment there's any leverage at all, Google will use it to squash forks. Conversely, has Microsoft ever tried to stop WINE or ReactOS? (Honest question, actually, I don't know.)

Now let's ask some more relevant questions:

1. How many times has Google been investigated and fined by the FTC and DOJ for illegal business practices?

2. How many times has Google been investigated by US and EU government agencies for privacy breaches?

3. How many times has Google been investigated for anti-competitive behavior in the US and the EU?

4. How many times has Google been accused (and sued) by smaller companies for unfair business practices?

5. How many times has Google been accused of intentionally providing poor support for a competitor's product?

6. How many times has Google been sued for infringing somebody else's IP?

7. Has Google been sued by Sun for "hijacking" Java?

8. Has Microsoft been made to pay damages for abusing standards-essential patents?

9. Has Microsoft been sued for colluding in anti-poaching agreements?

Some things Google has escaped (e.g. antitrust in the US), and some don't apply to Microsoft (abusing FRAND patents, anti-poaching collusion, illegal pharma ads), but most apply to both: investigations, settlements and fines in the US and EU for anticompetitive conduct, privacy breaches and illegal business practices; accusations of crippling competitors' products (Netscape etc. for Microsoft, competing service providers like Yelp, YouTube/Maps on Windows Phone for Google); accusations of stealing IP and unfair business practices (e.g. Apple's UI lawsuit and i4i for Microsoft, Author's Guild and SkyHook for Google); and so on.

Anecdotally, having been privy to some negotiations with Google in two separate companies, they very much throw their weight around.

> I wouldn't even bother responding to stuff like this, but it's getting upvoted on HN which is depressing.

As much as you'd not like to admit it as an employee -- and it may not be apparent to the rank and file from inside -- there are very clear parallels in how both companies behave. Google is certainly throwing their weight around these days, which is precisely why Microsoft was hated in the 90s.

Ahh, that is very helpful, thanks. So my evaluation of their answer was premature, but I guess no more premature than those who would take it as an indication that "B&N sure showed Microsoft".

Hah, even "something that was selling well" is not a description that could be applied to Kin.

Regarding Asha: I hear Asha is doing crazy well in low-end markets. Not sure how Microsoft can leverage it, but I'm sure they are aware of this.

I'm not sure that was bunk in Nokia's case. When they realized that Symbian had to go, they also realized that the vast bulk of the company was organized around that one OS. And if sources are to be believed, most of that deadweight was fiefdoms jealously guarded by entrenched groups, which meant they were not going to be conducive to "pivot" to a new direction. Now they had to shed that humongous deadweight and produce a competitive "modern" smartphone. I think it's entirely possible that in that situation whatever resources you have left, you may well have no choice but to bet the farm.

Nokia may have used Android to force Microsoft into a buyout, but I doubt they were going to seriously pursue it, for one big reason: that would have entailed compulsorily licensing Google Maps, which is a direct competitor to their own mapping division. You may think that doesn't sound so bad, but consider this:

1) It dilutes the billions they paid for Navteq.

2) As the SkyHook lawsuits have shown us(IIRC) Google demands all location data produced by Android devices to improve their own geo services. As such, Nokia would have ended up building devices that end up improving a competing service.

3) Considering the mapping division is one of only three divisions Nokia held on to, it's undoubtedly important to them long term. I am not sure, in their eyes, the pros of having an Android phone out there would have outweighed the cons of improving a competing mapping service.

I also mention illiteracy. They lack even the basics to grasp any knowledge they could find online, or the capacity to imagine how they could use it, let alone being aware of what "online" is. My point is that their situation is so drastically alien to us, that ways we imagine they could leverage information simply does not apply to them.

For instance, the basics beyond food and shelter. Something we take for granted, like, say electricity, is not easily available to them. To get them Internet, you have to first get them power.

And then you have to convince them to let their kids peruse the Internet, because that's not going to earn money for their next meal, whereas going out and working in the fields or a construction site is.

The ironic thing is, many of them are aware that education is important, but in a very shallow way: to them, if it doesn't come with a degree attached, it's a complete waste of time. Not only is that mostly true for their situation, they lack the foundation to even imagine that they could actually apply the knowledge themselves to improve their own lives. Education is the ticket, but it's so much more complex than "here's the Internet, go learn."

It's hard to appreciate their situation until you spend enough time in the poorer parts of a third world country and see this day in and day out.

Many people are making the leap from "access to information" to "better lives" without proper explanation of how that would work. Sure, for us it's obvious, but we're not the demographic Gates is talking about. The poorest of the poor have drastically different problems, and it's not obvious to me that they're something information can solve. "Student researching school report" seems like a good example, but much of this demographic don't even have the opportunity to go to school. And considering a full 50% of India lives below the poverty line, that's a humongous demographic.

And whatever problems can be solved by information, the poor are already making do via cheap mobile phones and their own ad hoc social networks. Which is probably the only thing that's viable for them, considering many can't even read properly and so speech is the best form of communication for them.

You could say that Internet access will create new industries and opportunities and the economic benefits will "trickle down", but 1) the timeframes are much larger (as Gates says), and 2) in my limited experience, very little seems to trickle down below the lower middle class. In fact, in India, the lower classes decry the "IT outsourcing" revolution, because prices went up across the board because the middle class suddenly had more disposable income. This did create a bunch of new jobs in the service industry, but on the whole the price increase only made things worse for the very poor.

I'm on a mobile device, so I cannot research as much as I'd like, but this is just a patent application, not an issued patent, and more encouragingly, a quick glance at USPTO pair shows that is was abandoned in 2010. It was abandoned following a non-final rejection by the examiner.

Now it doesn't mean that it's dead for good, since abandoned applications can often be revived, but given that it's Microsoft, who has enough resources to pursue even trivial patents, and that it has been 3 years since it was abandoned, I'd be cautiously optimistic.

On the other hand, it has been referenced by a bunch of other patents, indicating they cover similar subject matter, so you should look into them too.

PS being open source won't save you from infringement.

Let me argue why I think this is patent is not too bad, and actually interesting in some ways not typically discussed.

First here's the broadest claim (formatted for readability):

A non-transitory computer-readable medium that stores instructions executable by one or more processors to perform a method for attracting users to a web page, comprising:

instructions for creating a special event logo by modifying a standard company logo for a special event, where the instructions for creating the special event logo includes instructions for modifying the standard company logo with one or more animated images;

instructions for associating a link or search results with the special event logo, the link identifying a document relating to the special event, the search results relating to the special event;

instructions for uploading the special event logo to the web page;

instructions for receiving a user selection of the special event logo; and instructions for providing the document relating to the special event or the search results relating to the special event based on the user selection.

It's certainly not revolutionary, but patents rarely are. It was filed in 2001 and finally issued in 2011, being rejected multiple times along the way. That may have been partly due to them trying to claim too much and partly the "reject by default" unofficial policy then-director Dudas had instituted within the USPTO during his reign. (Patent practitioners encouraged to chime in here.) Nevertheless, what has emerged is not really too bad (for a certain perspective of "bad") because it's a) pretty narrow, and thus, b) highly unlikely to infringe by mistake. As such, this is not a good example of the patent system being broken, even though at first glance it does not seem very novel.

But I could also make an argument for novelty! Google Doodles probably is pretty novel because Google was -- as far as I can tell -- the first company to systematically modify its logo this way. Sure, several brands modify their logos once in a while, e.g. during Christmas, but Google took it to a whole new level, and in doing so, cultivated a fun and carefree personality for their brand. There's an interview with an early Google employee where he says he was horrified by this practice because it went against everything he was taught in Brand Management 101. I know nothing about brand management, but if true, it makes a case for non-obviousness. Furthermore, this undoubtedly system fulfills the title of the patent, because many people, including myself, often visit the Google homepage just to check out the doodles. It's undeniably a beneficial feature for their business.

Unfortunately, "systematically modifying a company logo to create a fun-loving brand perception" is not what they patented. For various reasons, such as being a business method and a rather abstract concept, such a claim would be difficult to get through. (Yes, even in the USPTO.) Maybe they tried anyway, which may be why it took 10 years to issue. But what they actually got was the claim above, which is simply a collection of steps to change the company logo during special events and link it to search results that really only applies to web search engines. It says nothing of the execution and artistic chops required to pull it off properly. It says nothing about brand management and the unique brand perception it created. There are only certain things a patent can protect.

And I'm honestly not sure why Google worked so hard to protect this with a patent. There are easier ways to inflate a portfolio, and even if we assume it to be a "good" patent, it's worthless. Because after 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars put in, Google now has a patent that nobody else will infringe simply because it's something that probably only Google can pull off with their brand.