Ohh! Ohh! I know the answer – Microsoft

It Does Remind Me of a Previous Antitrust Case
[Via Daring Fireball]

Paul Thurrott:

And I’d also point out that Google licenses Android for free. So by raising the price of Android by imposing licensing fees on technologies Android is in fact using, Apple, Microsoft, and others are arguably simply leveling the playing field and taking away an artificial Android advantage, forcing the OS to compete more fairly. Arguably, by “dumping” Android in the market at no cost, Google—which has unlimited cash and can afford to do such a thing — is behaving in an anticompetitive fashion. In fact, one could argue that Google is using its dominance in search advertising to unfairly gain entry into another market by giving that new product, Android, away for free. Does this remind you of any famous antitrust case?

[More]

Just being dominant is not the criterium. A company must be abusing a monopoly position and leveraging that monoply to enter a new market.

In England, over 92% of searches use Google. It is even higher in the rest of Europe.

Those look like monopoly numbers. Could be an interesting time for them, what with the patent trials and such.

Re-readinng the ‘Tactics of Mistake’

by cdrummbks

Gordon Dickson is one of my favorite authors and this one is a quick read. It helps make me feel a little more hopeful about current events.

It is too bad that the book is out of print but a Kindle edition is available.  As is an iBook for the iPhone. More people should read it.

How the roll of a die can get people to tell the truth

Dice Help Scientists Get Honest Answers to Touchy Questions
[Via 80beats]

New tools for conservation?

What’s the News: Maybe it’s you—or maybe it’s the dice. A technique that relies on concealing individual transgressions while revealing greater truths is letting biologists get to the bottom of South African farmers’ killing of leopards.

What’s the Context:

In South Africa, there’s constant tension between carnivores and local farmers, who may kill animals they perceive as a threat to livestock. Knowing whether farmers are doing this helps conservationists understand the driving forces behind animals’ extinction and plot countermeasures, but since killing carnivores like leopards and brown hyenas is illegal, it’s hard to get a straight answer from farmers about their activities. Enter the randomized response technique, which was first developed in 1965. Also used by social scientists to get people to talk about their sex lives, it lets researchers see overall trends in taboo behavior without being able to pin a crime or an embarrassing behavior on any one person.

[More]

The subject rolls a die. If they roll a “1″ they always answer the question “no”. If they roll a “6″ they answer “yes”. No matter what the truth is.

Otherwise they are asked to answer truthfully.

This actually results in many people telling the truth than a standard survey. The ‘deniability’ of the dice throw means no one can point to them as an animal killer. But the overall stats allow the surveyors to tell what a populaton may be doing.

Kind of ingenious use of human foibles. People will more likely tell the truth if they can deny it.

Android and malware

by HoskingIndustries

iOS Users, Start Your Gloating! Android Is Riddled With Malware, Researchers Say [Security]
[Via Cult of Mac]

Beware Android users, malware authors are picking Google’s platform as their first foray into mobile mayhem, security researchers say. Interestingly, there’s no mention of malware using Apple’s iOS.

“As mobile devices grow in popularity, so do the incentives for attackers,” said Kevin Mahaffey, Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of Lookout Mobile Security. The prevalence and sophistication of mobile malware attacks have “evolve[d] significantly in the first six months of 2011,” he said.

Between a half million and one million users were infected by mobile malware during the first half of this year, the researchers say. Additionally, 30 percent of mobile users are likely to click on a link containing malicious and phishing material as the threat of web-based cross-platform attacks rise.

Android users are two-and-a-half times as likely to run into mobile malware today compared to six months ago, claims the San Francisco, Calif. company. In June, GGTracker appeared in the United States. The malware signs users up for premium texting services that can add $10 per service charges to telephone bills. Previously seen only in China, Eastern Europe and Russia, this malware attack also includes Malvertising, according to the report.

[More]

So one benefit of the open and free Android system is a much larger problem with malware than on iOS. One of the things Jobs realized from early on is that people want their phone to work 100% of the time. They do not want it plagued by the same problems if malware and crashes seen on a computer.

That is one reason he introduced the iPhone without apps – his worry that without proper vetting, apps would be more likely to crash the phone. So no we have the App store to provide a walled garden where we know things are pretty safe and will not bring down our phones. It is like a shopping center for apps.

Not so in the Android world, where the marketplace more closely resembles a swap meet than a shopping center. Sure, you may get a great deal but then you may also get taken.

To each their own, I guess.

Some insight into Google’s new anti-patent tirades

Why Google lashed out at Apple and Microsoft
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

Android is in deep trouble on the patent front, and its top lawyer knows it

Google’s (GOOG) chief legal counsel’s angry screed on the company’s official blog in which he accuses Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) of waging a hostile, organized, anti-competitive campaign against Android through dubious and bogus patents (adjectives all his) may be remembered as one of the most misguided briefs any high-tech lawyer has ever written.

[More]

It turns out that there are a ton of other patents out there for sale and it wants to try and prevent consortiums from outbidding it.

“Why did Google blog about patents today?” Techcrunch‘s MG Siegler asked on Wednesday. “Because the Nortel loss was just the beginning.” He points out that Google has joined the bidding for 8,800 patents owned by InterDigital. Google, he writes, “has nearly $40 billion in cash and cash equivalents to spend. But Apple has almost double that. And if Apple teams up with Microsoft again, they’ll have over $100 billion in buying power. At the end of the day, Google will not be able to out-bid Apple, and they’re running out of options.”

It does not have many patents of its own, while MS and Apple have plenty. And both Apple and MS have huge piles of cash – gee, I wonder if those two things are linked.

In addition, the court battles may not be going so good:

Some e-mails turned up last month in Google’s patent infringement dispute with Oracle that show Android developer Andy Rubin recommending that Google license Java and being overruled by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

As FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller reports, when the judge overseeing the case saw the e-mails, he advised Google’s legal team to settle out of court: “You are going to be on the losing end of this document with Andy Rubin on the stand. … If willful infringement is found, there are profound implications for a permanent injunction. So you better think about that.”

Willful infringement. On Google’s main bit of technology. I can see why they are so desparate to find some patents they can buy that will give them some leverage in the negotiations to settle. If Google can not find something to hold over Oracle’s head, they could be in a heap of trouble.

It sounds like Google felt that if they could not have all the patents, no one could

Microsoft says Google refused to join the Novell patent consortium
[Via AppleInsider]

In response to a public complaint by Google accusing Apple and Microsoft of a patent-wielding conspiracy to hold back its Android platform, Microsoft’s general counsel has pointed out that Google rebuffed an invitation to join the consortium, apparently with the hope of obtaining all of the Novell patents for itself.

[More]

Google offered over $3 billion alone for the Nortel patents that went to the consortium for over $4 billion. They wanted all those patents for themselves.

They have refused to join previous consortiums, even when invited, wishing to keep all the patents for themseleves They lost both times and now they just whine.

They now send out their high brass to pout about how unfair it all is and how the patent system is so flawed and how its competitors are not nnovating and how they are being forced to pay money for the IP.

Such a sad story. The same one we hear from every company who mainly copy the IP from others.

Google wants to give away products for free in order to make money from ads. They appear to be taking the easier route – using IP from others instead of developing their. At least, that is what so much of this seems to be about.

IP issues may be out of contol right now but the basic principle is sound – provide certain rights to the originator of a novel issue to compensate them for their making it available to society and to prevent cheats from stealing the idea to make money without having to take the risk.