While the register portrays Google's moves as blundering, Dan Lyon's take is the exact opposite. I suspect it may be a while before we know which is true, although I want to lean towards Dan's view:
I think Dan's probably wrong on this. First, in the Novell deal MS ended up getting most of their money back, they basically just licensed the patents (part of the DoJ deal).
For Nortel there were at least 5 other consortium members -- MS, Sony, and EMC paid a total of $800M (not sure of the exact split). Apple paid $2.6B.
My point is that by doing a consortium approach they actually spent relatively little money on it, and they all cross-license. Google, OTOH, is paying the full $12.5B for Motorola.
Looking at MMI's balance sheet, they have $3B in cash. So Google is really paying $9.5B. And, IMO, they are getting so much more for that money than they would have received with a pure IP-only play like Nortel.
I suspect Dan is closer to right than wrong - particularly on the FTC angle.
I'm not saying this did wrong by not doing a pure-IP play, but I don't think they did a rope-a-dope.
In addition to the points I made earlier, Google driving up the price of patents works against them too. It's not as if Motorola doesn't seem what the going rate of Nortel and Interdigital patents are. In fact just last week Motorola said they were open to doing WP phones. That was purely a way to get the last dollar on the selling price.
My point is that Google didn't get AppleSoft to pay all that much since they did it consortium style. And the price Google paid for Motorola was probably higher than it needed to be if Motorola didn't value their patents with respect to prices they saw in the Nortel deal (and they're not stupid enough to have missed it).
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While the register portrays Google's moves as blundering, Dan Lyon's take is the exact opposite. I suspect it may be a while before we know which is true, although I want to lean towards Dan's view:
http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2011/08/15/suck-on-it-applesoft...
I think Dan's probably wrong on this. First, in the Novell deal MS ended up getting most of their money back, they basically just licensed the patents (part of the DoJ deal).
For Nortel there were at least 5 other consortium members -- MS, Sony, and EMC paid a total of $800M (not sure of the exact split). Apple paid $2.6B.
My point is that by doing a consortium approach they actually spent relatively little money on it, and they all cross-license. Google, OTOH, is paying the full $12.5B for Motorola.
Looking at MMI's balance sheet, they have $3B in cash. So Google is really paying $9.5B. And, IMO, they are getting so much more for that money than they would have received with a pure IP-only play like Nortel.
I suspect Dan is closer to right than wrong - particularly on the FTC angle.
I'm not saying this did wrong by not doing a pure-IP play, but I don't think they did a rope-a-dope.
In addition to the points I made earlier, Google driving up the price of patents works against them too. It's not as if Motorola doesn't seem what the going rate of Nortel and Interdigital patents are. In fact just last week Motorola said they were open to doing WP phones. That was purely a way to get the last dollar on the selling price.
My point is that Google didn't get AppleSoft to pay all that much since they did it consortium style. And the price Google paid for Motorola was probably higher than it needed to be if Motorola didn't value their patents with respect to prices they saw in the Nortel deal (and they're not stupid enough to have missed it).
I've never once read a register article and felt enlightened -- I've mentally compartmentalized them as a place to ignore.
Did I get the wrong impression, and they can in fact be a useful source of new & commentary?
So how does that dovetail with the other story that Google swooped in to buy MMI when they heard Microsoft was a prime contender?
http://gigaom.com/2011/08/15/guess-who-else-wanted-to-buy-mo...