bigmushroom

zimmie said:

Uh ... is this somehow different from their acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion? They later sold it to Lenovo for $2.9 billion, taking a $9.6 billion loss.

Not quite.

- They sold Motorola to Lenovo for 2.9 billion (as you correctly report).
- They also sold the cable modem and set-top box business to Arris for 2.35 billion in 2012.
- Motorola had 3 billion in cash.

So once you factor everything out (plus some tax assets apparently), it appears they lost not more than 3.5 billion on the deal. A nice article is here:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview-lenovo/

In return, they kept most of Motorola's patents in the end and defused a looming patent war between Motorola and other Android licensees.

So one view is that they paid about 3.5 billion for Motorola patents - which is less than Apple and Microsoft paid when they teamed up to buy Nortel patents for 4.5 billion.

But more importantly, Motorola was about to sue other Android manufacturers (Samsung, HTC). Google appeared to buy Motorola to end that threat because Android was not yet the dominant alternative to iOS. If Motorola would have sued everyone else, it could have disrupted the whole eco-system.

So I don't think Google regrets buying Motorola - it might have been a defensive move (getting more patents, prevent a patent war with other Android OEMs) but it wasn't hugely expensive in the end.

command_f said:

Thoughtful article, thank you.

Google's appropriation of Java does seem to me to be morally, even if not legally, wrong and I respect Oracle for pursuing the case. That said, I'm not sure that (hypothetically) abandoning Android would be an adequate strategy for avoiding any ultimate verdict in Oracle's favour. Any such settlement would likely allow for continuing use of Android through licensing (or whatever) for huge numbers of existing and updatable devices. Unless Google just abandoned the entire user base, which seems unlikely.

1) The Oracle/Google trial affects the Android runtime (which exposes the Java API) - the virtual machine that runs Google Play apps. It does not matter whether this runtime is running on the Android kernel, on Chrome OS or on Fuchsia OS. If Google wanted to avoid the Oracle troubles they would have to abandon their app store. That's not going to happen since it's central to Chrome OS now too. So any switch from Android to Chrome OS to run the Google Play apps is not motivated by this trial.

2) Whatever happens with the trial it will unlikely affect the current Android runtime. The trial is still about Google's Java API implementation based on the Apache Harmony implementation which Google used until 2016. With Android 7, Google switched to the openJDK version of the Java API which Sun licensed under GPL+classpath exception which essentially is equivalent to the LGPL (which means that apps on the Play Store can be closed source). So whatever happens with the current trial, it will cover damages up to Android 6 which is on the way out. By the time there will be any type of resolution, Oracle might get some damages for past infringement, but this would unlikely extend to any current versions of the Android app runtime.

3) Google cares about the Google Play apps - this is where all the network effects are. It doesn't matter whether this is running on Android kernel or Chrome OS. So why Chrome OS? First of all, there might be some technical reasons since it's a very secure design. But the main reason might be that Chrome OS cannot be modified by manufacturers: it's meant to be shipped and updated centrally by Google - much like Apple does with iOS. 

In 2008, when the first Android phones came out, the Android market (precursor of the Play store) had no apps - Google had no bargaining power and had to allow manufacturers to modify the kernel and skin the OS.

However, now Google built a large app store that can run on any kernel. It makes sense to leverage this by slowing abandoning Android and instead have future versions of Google Play run on Chrome OS and Fuchsia OS where Google controls the user experience completely. Google has enough influence now thanks to the Play store that it can slowly push OEMs to Chrome OS.

Google has every reason to prefer Chrome OS tablets over Android tablets - there is no fragmentation in Chrome OS, no skins, no pesky Samsungs that duplicate all of Google's services etc.

Maybe Samsung will soon have to develop Android on its own to keep up with new versions of the Play store - but given Samsung's poor record with software they would probably mess it up, and apps would run unreliably. 

I am not sure Motorola was such a bad deal for Google:

- They sold Motorola to Lenovo for 2.9 billion (as the article correctly reports).
- They also sold the cable modem and set-top box business to Arris for 2.35 billion in 2012.
- Motorola had 3 billion in cash.

So once you factor everything out (plus some tax assets apparently), it appears they lost not more than 3.5 billion on the deal. A nice article is here:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview-lenovo/

So one view is that they paid about 3.5 billion for Motorola patents - which is less than Apple and Microsoft paid when they teamed up to buy Nortel patents for 4.5 billion.

But more importantly, Motorola was about to sue other Android manufacturers (Samsung, HTC). Google appeared to buy Motorola to end that threat because Android was not yet the dominant alternative to iOS. If Motorola would have sued everyone else, it could have disrupted the whole eco-system.

So I don't think Google regrets buying Motorola - it might have been a defensive move (getting more patents, prevent a patent war with other Android OEMs) but it wasn't hugely expensive in the end.

jameskatt2 said:

Soli said:

jameskatt2 said:

This is ENTIRELY GOOGLE's fault.

1) If they want their YouTube App to run V9 video's (Google's proprietary format) then they should re-write the YouTube App to play V9 videos. The YouTube app is Google's app, not Apple's. 

2) Otherwise, Google should stop blocking access to 4K MP4 Videos on Apple TV.  MP4 is THE STANDARD for video.

BLAME Google for lack of 4K Videos on YouTube for Apple TV.

I do blame Google for this but can they just include the VP9 codec in the app? I'm under the impression that this isn't allowed with Apple's App Store rules.

There is nothing stopping Google from including the VP9 codec in the app.  

Skype uses a proprietary Microsoft codec for streaming.
NetFlix uses its own codec.
SlingBox uses its own codec.
Plex uses its own codec.

Google is simply trying to hardball Apple into using Google's VP9 codec in Safari. 

Apple will never do this since VP9 is proprietary. MP4 is the standard.

MP4 does require licensing fees - which Google is being cheap about and does not want to pay despite billions in profits.

MP4 is a container format - not a codec.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14

Netflix  and others don't use their own codecs - they use H.264, HEVC and VP9 (Netflix uses all 3, for example).

Not sure, what you mean with VP9 being proprietary - it's open sourced with a waver on all patent claims. However, it's not an ITU standard such as HEVC.

focher said:

It’s definitely better on its own, but there’s one use case that it’s really terrible for. If you use a personal Google Drive account and a company one under Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) then you can’t access both at the same time. You have to switch accounts. Previously, you could just run Backup and Sync at the same time as Google Drive to give parallel access to both.

The new app allows you to use up to 4 accounts. So I have my personal account and work account and they show up as two separate drives.

tmay said:

franklinjackcon said:

tmay said:

franklinjackcon said:

Meanwhile, in the real world, Google is setting the standard for autonomous cars, has the best assistant on the market, and keeps making advances in photos. It's still early days for all AI but to suggest they've squandered their lead is plain silly.

I think that the point of the article is that it isn't innovation if you aren't making money at it, and almost without fail, Apple, with a small share of the smartphone market is grabbing most of the revenue and profits comparative to Android OEM'a and developers.

Google itself is doing fine, excepting the scrutiny given it's near monopoly in search, and privacy issues, and it's persistent inability to generate much revenue off of consumer hardware. Google has noticeable leads in services and technologies that the OEM's and developers have, for the most part, been unable to leverage to enhance revenue and profit, and Google I/O doesn't appear to have accelerated that.

If that is the point of the article then I disagree with it. Google makes its money in advertising - much of it on mobile - and uses the profits to fund innovative technologies that won't be profitable in the R&D stage. 

How are the OEM's doing? Which "innovative technologies" has Google released that have generated any income other than from search or advertising?

Google technologies generate a lot of social surplus even if the benefit does not go always to Google.

Kubernetes is the standard for container orchestration and was donated by Google to an open source foundation. It's the standard now for everyone including azure, aws, even Oracle cloud.

Tensorflow is the most popular ml framework both in production and for teaching. Donated by Google.

Hadoop and all its countless derivatives are built a set of papers from 2005 on MapReduce that essentially tool Google's system as a blueprint.

Angular is one of the most popular web dev frameworks. By Google.

Go is a fast growing system programming language. Also by Google.

This is an eclectic list which is easy to continue. Google has been great about open sourcing high quality frameworks or published enough about their production systems so that others could copy it.

Apple also did great things such as webkit. Microsoft has been fantastic recently as well.

There is no reason to view this as a zero sum game. We live in great times where many companies produce great tech that is open sourced from the start. 

bkkcanuck said:

I disagree with the Federal Court.  

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word.  The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP.   Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base.  As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use.  Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.  

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc.  An API is not much different than the software equivalent.  

I agree that this is a pretty uninformed article.

First of all, this whole case was about API definitions and not the Java language per se. You could always copy languages and people for a long time thought that Apis are just part of the language. 

The only reason the CAFC ruled in this case is because the original Oracle case had patent claims and the CAFC gets all patent cases. The patent case was lost early on for Oracle and so they focused on the Apis which even Florian Mueller thought back in 2010 was an afterthought. Unexpectedly it became the central part of the case.

Whether this decision will stand or will be thrown out by the supreme Court is open. The CAFC has a bad record for being reversed by the supreme Court because it is exceeding patentee friendly. CAFC  itself originally did not decide the fair use question during the first appeal (when it threw out the trial judge determination that Apis are functional and hence not copyrightable). When the jury then decided in 2016 that this was fair use the nineth circuit didn't seem to like that answer either and threw it out. This is uncommon and I am curious what happens during the appeal to the supreme Court.

Finally, more specifics. Google used the harmony implementation of java from Apache which was under the Apache license.

Sun and Oracle also had a GPL openJDK implementation with classpath exception (which makes it effectively the LGPL license) and with Android 6 Google switched the libraries from the harmony derived ones to openJDK. 

So since 2016 the phone Android use openJDK and Chromebook runtime uses Android 7 and hence also openJDK. So the damages case (if the case is not reversed again by supreme Court) will cover usage up to Android 5. There were no major breaking changes when switching to openJDK. So it's not clear where exactly the damage is - Google just had the bad luck of using harmony instead of openJDK from the start (to be fair openJDK improved a lot over the years too).

So there won't be any copyrigt injunction etc. There might be damages.

However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea. You create Apis for third parties to create code. But you can essentially appropriate the code of these 3rd parties if they cannot write their own runtime to implement the same API. For this reason Apis were always considered to be a different animal than code implementing those Apis.

gatorguy said:

melgross said:

This is all about the money. It’s already been reported that Google will pay Apple $3 billion this year, up from last year.

I don't think so Mel.

There was an analyst mentioned here at AI in an article guessing that Google might have to pay as much as $3B to secure rights. There was no one claiming it as fact to the best of my knowledge. 

Here is the article (one version at least):

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billion-to-remain-default-search--bernstein.html

I think the more interesting info that I got from that article was that the Google payments are counted as part of service revenue for apple. 

Service revenue was at an annual run-rate of about 16 billion in 2014 and 28 billion now. 

http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/17/02/01/see-how-apples-services-revenue-has-grown-steadily-amid-changes-in-other-business-segments

So that's an annual increase of 12 billion. 

Let's assume that it is true that Google pays apple 3 billion a year. In 2014 the paid 1 billion. So of the 12 billion increase 2 billion would be from Google. Let's say the rest is from apps, music etc (10 billion).

Now those 2 billion are pure profit for apple. 

Those remaining 10 billion have some cost especially music licensing etc. So lets say 50 percent is cost. Then the extra profit from services would be 5 billion.

So it's interesting that a significant part of profit increase might be coming from Google payments.

foggyhill said:

bigmushroom said:

zimmie said:

Uh ... is this somehow different from their acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion? They later sold it to Lenovo for $2.9 billion, taking a $9.6 billion loss.

Not quite.

- They sold Motorola to Lenovo for 2.9 billion (as you correctly report).
- They also sold the cable modem and set-top box business to Arris for 2.35 billion in 2012.
- Motorola had 3 billion in cash.

So once you factor everything out (plus some tax assets apparently), it appears they lost not more than 3.5 billion on the deal. A nice article is here:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview-lenovo/

In return, they kept most of Motorola's patents in the end and defused a looming patent war between Motorola and other Android licensees.

So one view is that they paid about 3.5 billion for Motorola patents - which is less than Apple and Microsoft paid when they teamed up to buy Nortel patents for 4.5 billion.

But more importantly, Motorola was about to sue other Android manufacturers (Samsung, HTC). Google appeared to buy Motorola to end that threat because Android was not yet the dominant alternative to iOS. If Motorola would have sued everyone else, it could have disrupted the whole eco-system.

So I don't think Google regrets buying Motorola - it might have been a defensive move (getting more patents, prevent a patent war with other Android OEMs) but it wasn't hugely expensive in the end.

Right... Come on. Seriously. Give the actual worth of those patent instead of just peddling a spin.

With hindsight bias all the smartphone patents weren't all they were thought to be. But in 2012 3.5 billion dollars didn't seem to be anl crazy amount of money to spend on Motorola parents - especially considering what was spent on Nortel parents by apple and Microsoft.

Finally, as I pointed out, Motorola's CEO had made noises about suing htc and Samsung over those patents. From google's point of view this was an entirely wasteful brooding civil war between Android oems - and it didn't matter if the patents were weak or strong, it was just a zero sum game from googles perspective that would have threatened Android. It might be hard to imagine but back in 2012 many people thought that Motorola had one of the strongest patent portfolios in the industry.

tzeshan said:

But I have publicized it on some Chinese web site. 

Nice to know there is some good patriotic Chinese informers like yourself who tell the Chinese government whom else to pressure and blackmail. While you are at it, while you don't you tell your handlers to take a bit easier on those millions of Uyghurs they locked up in concentration camps (sorry - education camps). Some of those stupid Westerners have started to notice. 

Just a guess - Google probably doesn't care as much about China since they essentially left in 2009 and don't have much activity left there. Unlike Apple.