Google 101: Hypocrisy at its Finest

Let us rewind back to a little over a month ago. Nortel, who filed for bankruptcy back in 2009, put its remaining patents portfolio up on the auction block.¹ A number of big named companies bid for the patents, including Google and Intel among others, with the final bid awarded to an alliance of tech companies consisting of Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Sony Ericsson, and EMC. The portfolio sold for about $4.5 billion in cash, which is far more than the patents were actually worth. But hey, that's what an auction is for, right?

Though Google was not a winner in the bid for Nortel's patents, they did get a series of press mentions for the manner in which they placed their bids.² Initial confusion arose over the figures Google chose, such as $1,902,160,5400, $2,614,972,128, and $3,141,592,653. You may recognize the last figure as being the first 7 digits of Pi, though it turns out that all of Google's bids were references to mathematical constants. While such behavior is no surprise to anyone who is familiar with Google's geeky culture, some analysts wondered if Google was not taking the auction serious, and thus making a mockery with their bids.

Fast forward to a month later, when Senior VP and CLO of Google, David Drummond, published a post on Google's official blog, chastising Apple and Microsoft for their participation in the auction.³ Drummond made a claim that Google's Android mobile operating system is a victim of a hostile, organized campaign [...] waged through bogus patents. Evidence of such exists in the fact that Microsoft is now demanding that Samsung⁴ and Barnes & Noble⁵ among others, pay royalties for each Android smartphone that it sells, due to patent infringement. A similar demand was awarded to Microsoft last year, after striking a deal with HTC, ensuring that Microsoft receives royalties for every unit sold.⁶ As irony would have it, Microsoft now makes more money from the sales of Android phones than from mobile handsets running the Windows Phone OS.⁷