Balls

The problem with Gruber is that he'll write a fair analysis only as long as the fair analysis favors Apple. This means we won't get a fair analysis from him on things like the patent war and app store high-handedness. Sometimes he'll do a great piece. Sometimes you have to sift carefully for the bias. Then there are articles like this - insults, lies and condescension:<p>- <i>Lyons has always been an ass, but when did he get so bitter?</i><p>- <i>you just look childish when, only after losing the auction, you then claim you didn’t really want the thing anyway</i> (google never cried sour grapes on nortel)<p>- <i>Motorola knew they had Google by the balls. ... and they made Google pay and pay handsomely</i><p>The trick is not to get fooled by the reasonable-sounding phrases like: <i>Another way to look at this story...</i> and <i>That’s not to say it wasn’t a bold, brash move, or even... the right move</i>.<p>To those of you discussing Gruber's position on patents: it is the patents that change position relative to Gruber. :)<p><i>edit: typos, formatting</i>

All I can think about is that Microsoft/Apple blew billions on patents which forced Google to blow billions more to block their move.<p>Think how much real innovation $20 billion could have created if it weren't for the shitty patent system.

The primary issue that I have with Gruber's argument is that it seems to reverse some of his more recent assertions about the Google Patent Wars(TM). Haven't we been hearing from Gruber for months on end how patents were going to somehow destroy Android (or cripple it, which is basically the same thing)? Now we're supposed to simply ignore that Google bought 3x the Nortel patents at 3x the price[1] (Gruber's math, not mine), a move that greatly diminishes (if not negates) their loss in the Nortel auction? Now we're supposed to focus on Motorola's problems as a handset manufacturer?<p>I get that Gruber's mainly going after the over-the-top Lyons piece (a piece which strikes me as poorly thought out and terribly argued). But it does seem like this is Gruber's first move toward a pivot away from the importance of patents in Android vs. Everyone.<p>You know, those patents that Gruber has been trumpeting for weeks now as the death knell of Android.<p><i>Just ignore those</i>.<p>[1]: Or cheaper?: See recoiledsnake's comment below: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890038" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890038</a>

I would be just fine with banning Daring Fireball from HN, if it meant we could avoid the biweekly DDoS on HN's intellectual capacity sparked by tens-deep threads arguing about Gruber's pro-Apple bias.<p>Only on HN or Reddit is Gruber's pro-Apple stance not the most boring conceivable topic. It's embarrassing to see ostensibly smart people <i>pick it apart</i>, as if it was faceted and nuanced.<p>I myself love Daring Fireball, because Gruber is an f'ing good writer. But I could give a sh!t about discussing him on HN. Anyone else want to just start flagging these things off the site? Look at these silly comment threads. You'd be doing a lot of people a favor by nipping them in the bud.

Does Gruber ever add any real information in an information theoretic sense? He seems to be on Apple's side 100% of the time. (I guess he suggested that the App Store approval process was broken at some point...)<p>He mostly just appears to be a pro-Apple pundit who has a popular blog that gets a lot of revenue in advertising. But I never see Cringely or Dvorak posts upvoted. What gives?<p>This does not seem to be very reasoned analysis. He calls the CEO childish and Android (the largest smartphone OS in the US?) desperate. This feels like a hyperbolic opinion piece. What should I be getting out of this article?

I see this: Google was a happy accident because of the web.<p>Given the trajectory of Apple, where would the web be in 10 years if Google wasn't throwing everything, and clearly they are doing so, at keeping their platform alive.<p>Android is about keeping the web a dominant platform as we shift to the next generation of computing.<p>Google is right to bet the farm on keeping that endeavor alive.<p>It appears as though they got backed into the corner, but we've never seen Google make a purchase like this.<p>It's more expensive than usual. And it's not an obvious up-and-comer.<p>I imagine the #1 thing they could do would be to start picking off staff from both companies to form a super-group to push the hardware into yet unknown territory.<p>(As a person whose career interests align with Google's I hope the knock it out of the fucking park.)

<i>Motorola held out for a full acquisition at a premium far above the company’s actual value, and threatened to go after its sibling Android partners if Google didn’t acquiesce.</i><p>Say what you will about Gruber and his Apple fanboyism, this rings true to me. By and large, the article seems very astute.

Gruber claims that Apple and Microsoft probably are feeling great that Google had to shell out $12.5B to acquire a failing company like Motorola along with its 'misguided' management and rapidly declining sales.<p>So what is wrong with that loaded closing statement? Well lots. Firstly he admits the patents part was a good move for Google and the Android platform. He also does math and says they bought 3x Nortel patents for 3x the price. So essentially Google got ton of other Motorola stuff (hardware division, cable modem, set top boxes, Android handset software team et.al) for free. Plus so far as I can tell Droid is a pretty well known and fairly successful brand and Motorola's management did the right thing in saving the company from going down under - not exactly misguided. Gruber would perhaps only call them guided if they did not compete with Apple in any way shape or form!<p>And what did Gruber had to say when Apple spent billions on Nortel patents? Nope not desperation or anything. Just the fact that Google lost was super important and Android was going to be in trouble.<p>Gruber also leaves us with no insight on what Google could have done better. He also doesn't feel nearly as bad about Google having Apple by the balls on Nortel patents and making them pay good for Nortel patents, as much as he does about Motorola having Google by the balls by just doing what any sane business will do to maximize its valuation. In comparison actually Google got an arguably better deal - 12.5B for 25000 patents, and a whole functional, moderately successful hardware company with diverse business.<p>P.S. Motorola has done phones long before Apple thought about it. As such they know a whole lot more about the hardware part as I can tell by the signal and voice quality of my Moto phone. Google and you will find many that can make reliable phone calls with Motorola phones when iPhone could never. So dissing Motorola may be fashionable but I think they know better.

<i>"Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales"</i> -- Gruber (with a link to an Asymco post, which doesn't actually mention sales figures, only market share)<p>Last quarter they sold 4.4 million smartphones, up from 2.7 million the same quarter last year. (If you're more interested in market share as depicted by Asymco's graph then they're growing slightly at around 5% of the smartphone market, compared with say Apple which is growing slightly at around 15%, or Samsung which has <i>gained</i> 15% in the last year to just under 20%.)<p>Even if you like to play the Asymco game of including dumbphones that don't run Android to make Android look bad, they still increased total phone sales year-on-year, to 11 million, meaning their increased Android sales replaced a smaller number of lost dumbphone sales.

Ok, so the math for everybody.<p>Google spent 12.5B. Motorola has 3B in cash. The stock market thought motorola was worth around 6-7B incl cash (assuming they weren't just factoring in a takeover already).<p>So google really paid around 6B for the patents, they don't have to do anything to motorola. They can sell all or parts of it, maybe muck around with some of the parts of Motorola <i>other</i> than cell phones. But either way the Nortel auction was 4.5B for JUST patents while google gets a mobile electronics company + patents for its 12B.

Google picks up nearly three times as many patents as AppleSoft got from Novell and Nortel...<p>And they paid… nearly three times as much...<p>and a phone company came free?

It's true that Motorola is not the most exciting handset maker. However, if Google could just get rid of the nonsense and get Motorola to create "pure" devices, some very good things could come out of it. They are certainly capable of it.<p>Personally I am hoping to hear an announcement of the Xoom 2 as soon as possible.

The price of $12.5B is prior to discounting the $3B+ in cash the MMI is holding. A lot of emphasis is placed on the '$12.5B' value in this article, without taking into consideration that this is really 25% higher than the effective price of $9.5B, once you back out the cash.

The article makes a great case that Motorola is the real winner.<p>The buyout can't have been solely for the patents, because Motorola are losing patent battles. It's unlikely that it was just to own a phone manufacturer, because why buy a 3rd rate one at a 60% premium? So why? Because Motorola had Google by the balls and could have further fucked Android up for everyone else.<p>It's a shame how every discussion of a Daring Fireball article here collapses into 'Gruber is a fanboy', but it's particularly frustrating when it's an insightful article like this one. If he's half as bad as some of you make out, it should be easy to argue the points without resorting to attacking the man.

Is it an analysis or rant? Looks like JG is more annoyed with the fact that GOOG got patent portfolio than credible threat to iPhone with possible all integrated Moto based Android devices.<p>He is absolutely wrong on whole "patent wars" issue. Of course GOOG is showing its "big brother" attitude time to time but his beloved AAPL is not clean either. This holier than thou attitude sucks!<p>Moto may be "second-rate" mobile maker. They may be in loss. GOOG is not stupid to shell out 12B "just" for patent portfolio. Always remember GOOG thinks ahead of everyone. People were criticizing GOOG when they made Android open and free. They were criticizing about paying too much money to YouTube (which is on fire now). GOOG is definitely smarter than Gruber.