bigmushroom

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.

It's not clear what's proprietary about 

www.theverge.com/platform/amp

or 

amp.usatoday.com

Both are hosted on the original domain of the publisher. AMP is simply a set of Javascript libraries to minimize the amount of extra code that has to be loaded with every page request.

Moreover, Google Chrome on mobile devices (both iOS and Android) already does this:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/6/14524424/google-amp-update-share-link

For each AMP page, the link button on top reveals (and copies) the canonical version as intended by the publisher (and the URL does become visible when you click it on Chrome). The reason for this is exactly that the publisher domains conveys trust. Presumably, Safari uses exactly the same mechanism as Chrome to get the non-AMP version of a page.

sacto joe said:

It isn’t up to Apple to tell a sovereign people how to run their country. If the people of China don’t like being censored, then it’s up to them to end it. Frankly, Apple has given the people of China far more of a chance for real freedom than I ever dreamed possible. The same can be said for the world in general.

These sad sack opinionizers really don’t have a clue….

I think it's perfectly fine to just make a killing in China, sell what consumers desire and not care about the fact that iCloud servers have to be placed under Chinese government control in China, that all kinds of apps have to be removed from the app store and that news is either shut down or heavily filtered. Moreover, to keep staying in business these restrictions will have to be expanded in the near future (such as giving the government access to monitor FaceTime or iMessage conversations).

However, Apple then shouldn't make a big deal describing itself as a company that wants to change the world (something it likes to do when operating in places such as the US where this talk of talk doesn't get you kicked out of the country).

It's pretty difficult to think of a large company that refused to operate in a country due to moral objections. The only example that comes to my mind is Google leaving China in 2010 which came at a huge cost (it's reasonably to assume that China would be as important to Google today as China is to Apple).

The article should have the title "Why Apple has nothing to learn from Google because it can already do all that or has done it before".

Most of what Google has done this time around is on execution - improving assistant, photos, updates rather than flashy new features. 

Maybe that's boring and maybe Apple can execute much better than Google. But Apple fans should have at least some grudging respect for this approach given that much of Apples success is in executing products better than anyone else.

I am using Assistant and Photos quite a bit and they are impressive products. It's ok to admit that and learn something from it.

magman1979 said:

huckdaisy1 said:

sflocal said:

Sad, but the reality is that most schools will use what is the cheapest, not the best.  My nephews use Chromebooks in school and it just pains me to see the frustrations in their faces when those cheap pieces of junk act up.  

It pains me to see in classrooms these stupid apple laptops which are too thin with terrible keyboards.  Why they are obsessed with laptops so thin is beyond me.  As a long time shareholder I think their laptops suck.

Funny, since one of the hallmarks of Apple laptops are the keyboards and touch pads being best-in-class. And you say their laptops suck? Your BS wreaks of troll, get lost.

eumaeus said:

magman1979 said:

stickista said:

I'm as big an iPad fan as they come, and even I think that ChromeBooks are a far better solution for classrooms.

Spoken by someone who has obviously never used a junker ChromeBook, nor who values their privacy and is willing to hand it over to Google on a silver platter.

I have used Chromebooks, and (more to the point) my daughter uses them at her high school. She is perfectly content, despite the fact that we are an all Mac and iPad household at home. She really likes the ease with which she can access her school work from our Macs at home, in the same environment. 

I appreciate and value top-quality hardware, more than most people, but I think Chromebooks, junkers or otherwise, are just fine for schools. Especially for poorly funded public schools. The best tool in the world might not be the best tool for a particular job.

Like hell they're fine... All they do is infuriate most rational users with their poor performance and bargain-basement components, which don't last long at all and then end up in a landfill. Nice of the school to be teaching the next generation to be cheap bastards with no concept of using something of better quality that can last longer to preserve the environment, and oh, give you privacy and reliability.

And as for poorly-funded public schools, as someone else here mentioned already, Apple, along with most PC OEM's, offer competitive lease and buyback programs to help those with less funding still get decent hardware. Even junker Windows PC laptops are a FAR better option that a shitbox Chromebook running a web-based OS. At least those cheap Windows machine run a full operating system with local storage hardware, and can be properly and fully managed.

I have to echo the other poster whose daughter uses a Chromebook at high school. Our two daughters use chromebooks at middle and high school. They work just fine. You can get an excellent Chromebook for 250 to 300 which will run far better than any Windows PC costing less than 700. And I know this because I have used about 7 different brands of chromebooks over the past 6 years. 

Junker PC are usually a terrible choice for schools because they tend to be infested with malware unless the are constantly reimaged, they are slow and get slower over time.