I fear the essence of this story is true, that Google doesn't have a coherent strategy with regard to this fight, and its certainly out of their comfort zone, so this does feel more like someone flailing.
That being said, Google has a really deep pool of expertise in a lot of areas in house and if they can come up with a reasonable way to surface that expertise I would expect them to come up with a solid response.
The more I learn about Android and the way in which Google pursued mobile, the more I believe that Google never had a long term strategy, merely tactics aimed at being the first iPhone competitor - or rather they had a strategy to provide mobile services but the iPhone made their interface obsolete.
Their decisions regarding Android appear to have been made based on a corporate culture oriented toward trade secrets over patents, and their assumptions regarding IP appear to have been biased by that corporate culture - i.e. there's some viability to a clean room approach to copyright and trade secrets, there is not one for patents.
Google's "damn the torpedoes approach" got them into the marketplace quickly, but the mines are all still in the water and so is their fleet.
Comments
I fear the essence of this story is true, that Google doesn't have a coherent strategy with regard to this fight, and its certainly out of their comfort zone, so this does feel more like someone flailing.
That being said, Google has a really deep pool of expertise in a lot of areas in house and if they can come up with a reasonable way to surface that expertise I would expect them to come up with a solid response.
The more I learn about Android and the way in which Google pursued mobile, the more I believe that Google never had a long term strategy, merely tactics aimed at being the first iPhone competitor - or rather they had a strategy to provide mobile services but the iPhone made their interface obsolete.
Their decisions regarding Android appear to have been made based on a corporate culture oriented toward trade secrets over patents, and their assumptions regarding IP appear to have been biased by that corporate culture - i.e. there's some viability to a clean room approach to copyright and trade secrets, there is not one for patents.
Google's "damn the torpedoes approach" got them into the marketplace quickly, but the mines are all still in the water and so is their fleet.