
Thread beginning with comment 560288
Android is scary?
by ozonehole on Thu 2nd May 2013 02:50 UTC
Member since:

Thom said:

While Android's market share growth scares me...

Why does Android's market share growth scare you?

Well, actually scares me, but only because Microsoft extorts money for bogus patents on Android. But it's Microsoft that scares me, not Android. And Apple scares me too.

Google doesn't scare me at all. True, they're not all bunny rabbits and unicorns, but compared to most ruthless American corporations, Google plays relatively nice. Aside from being consistently friendly to open source projects, they sue almost no one unless they've been sued first. Microsoft and Apple executives would sue their own mother for copyright infringement for singing lullabies to them when they were infants.

Edited 2013-05-02 02:53 UTC

Reply Score: 1

RE: Android is scary?
by Nelson on Thu 2nd May 2013 03:44 in reply to "Android is scary?"
Nelson Member since:

Its because everyone benefits when there is a wealth of competition and choice. That's what drives the state of the art forward.

And how is it bad that Microsoft is being compensated for their intellectual property?

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: Android is scary?
by lemur2 on Thu 2nd May 2013 04:08 in reply to "RE: Android is scary?"
lemur2 Member since:


Because it is not Microsoft's "property". For example, Microsoft sued Tom Tom and Barnes & Noble over FAT patents, but it turns out that there was prior art (code written by none other than Linus Torvalds) for the exact same functionality.



This is absolutely typical.

So why should Microsoft get money from Android, for which they did not develop the code, did not help test, release, distribute or maintain the code, and did not even come up with original ideas for the code?

The ONLY reason Microsoft gets money from Android vendors is that Microsoft threatens to sue them and at the same time offers them a legally unnecessary near-zero-cost bogus "license" to avoid any expensive lawsuit, with the sole proviso that the Android vendor does not reveal the terms of the deal.

Rather than fighting a legal battle it is cheaper for Android OEMs to just agree to the license from Microsoft to make them go away.

Edited 2013-05-02 04:20 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 7