Worth a read. When Google change their algorithm, your site ranking can change dramatically.

Software patents are hurting the software industry by allowing big incumbents and patent trolls or NPE’s (non practising entities) to place a huge tax on newcomers. (or in Microsoft’s case, make Android as expensive as possible to manufacturers in the hope of making their windows mobile OS more appealing)

Anyway, not many people would argue that it’s a bad situation, even President Obama said as much recently when trying to rein in the patent problem.

So what to do? Why get silly patent applications that should never be granted dismissed by the PTO that’s what!

reading this article shows that it isn’t as hard as it seems and doesn’t take much time. If every coder got one application blown away a month it would go a long way to making sure that once the current batch of rubbish patents have expired or been ruled invalid there were not a new batch waiting in the wings to take their place.

There is an effort underway to have Google crippled by the EU authorities for being an anti-competitive monopoly. One of the main groups behind this effort is called “Fairsearch”.

Fairsearch themselves claim to be all about forcing transparency and innovation on search, but basically they appear to be an anti-google group made up primarily of Google competitors (Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle as well as other smaller competitors). What they appear to want to do, is force Google to link to them for services Google themselves offer. (for example, maps, shopping etc.)

They also seem to be fairly liberal with the truth, such as claiming that it’s impossible to have any other search than Google in Android despite the fact that at least half a dozen android devices have been released that have Bing or Yahoo as their default search. One of those phones was locked onto the alternative search and couldn’t be changed. So clearly those claims are untrue. Read up before you believe anything they say. They do after all have a vested interest.

Hiding behind trade groups and lobyists and trolls/shills so as to smear a competitor without smearing yourself should be illegal in all of its forms. Facebook were busted for this sort of thing recently too.

Some reading on the subject:

Google not required on Android.

Who is Fairsearch?

Who is Fairsearch and why do they hate Google so much

Why can’t Fairsearch get anyone to listen to their anti-Google tirades?

What is wrong with the Fairsearch complaint to the EU about Google.

Another smear on Google from Microsoft

So in summary, if you want to read an unbiased discussion about Google, asking their competitors is not the way to go about it. Likewise if you want to use a different search engine to Google, change the URL at the top of your browser to one of the others or go into the android settings and change it there too. Unlike Microsoft’s anti-competitive history, there is no lock in here, alternatives are just a web address away.

Of course since Microsoft are dead against locking competing products out of phones and browsers, I imagine they will add options for native Chrome to be installed in Windows Phone and RT? And they will change the Sky-drive integration in Windows 8 to allow Google Drive, Dropbox or one of the others? If that sort of thing is actually illegal, how have Apple gotten away with only allowing their users to access services that Apple themselves approve of? As far as I am concerned, if you change one you should change them all. So every change Microsoft wants made to Google should also have to be made to Microsoft search and phone products too. This post is to help people find out who is really pulling the strings against Google. Oracle have just been beaten in court by Google and are appealing it. Nokia is getting it’s behind handed to it in the smartphone arena by Google Android and are a very very close partner with Microsoft who are of course Googles biggest competitor.

Just a thought for the day. In the old days, when you bought a book, you read it, then maybe you loaned it to some friends to read, then perhaps you sold or swapped it for another.

With E-books, the price is not that different from the physical book, but you are not supposed to loan it and it turns out you can’t sell it either.

Ditto with digital music and movies.

Except for the whole piracy thing, (which as it turns out may actually help sales.) content producers (not artists or authors, but rather production companies, recording companies and publishers) must be in a delirium of joy. Finally they are able to take away rights that physical goods provided, while not really needing to discount those goods. That is in addition to the fact that they no longer need to pay printers, distributors and physical media costs.

Worth keeping that in mind next time you hear them bleating about piracy stealing their livelihood. I’ll bet little if any of the money they are saving actually make it back to the artists who actually generated the content.

Frank

Very revealing considering that most of the technology in the iPhone wasn’t invented by Apple.

The court case between Apple and Samsung just got more interesting. Apple are always touting their innovation and Samsung has just pointed out in court that the iPhone would not exist had it not been for Samsung Technology. I have covered the non Apple innovations that the iPhone takes for granted before, but it’s nice to see others have noticed too.

I badly want to see Apple lose this case big time, and I want to see Microsoft’s license agreement with Samsung come to light in this case too. I also want to see Microsoft lose their case against Motorola. I want all of this for the same reasons. Apple and Microsoft want to use Patents to hold back competition so people have to accept less impressive technology for more money just so these two companies can profit more. Samsung was developing phone technology before either of the others and shouldn’t have to pay now just because they didn’t think it made any sense to patent crazy and simplistic ideas and designs. (Samsung could have patented music playing phones had they wanted too.) My message to Microsoft and Apple is a simple one, compete on your products merits and stop gaming the court system to get ahead.

I’ve recently been reading the Oracle verses Google court case at Groklaw and I must say I am surprised at one thing. Apache Harmony (an Open Source Java SE.) has been around for a very long time, Sun has known for many years exactly what was in Harmony and who put it there and why (by their own admission) and Apache has been hassling Sun to certify Harmony as Java compliant without having to pay for a TCL. (Apache give it away for free so non free terms are difficult for them). Because Apache were not able to get a free TCL to certify Harmony was fully Java compatible, they never stipulated that it was. That doesn’t mean it’s illegal because the Java language is free, it just means that without the certification they couldn’t claim it was Java compatible, or use trademarks owned by Sun.

Not only did Sun never go after Apache Harmony (which contains ALL the API’s that Oracle is suing Google for), the then CEO of Sun (Jonathan Schwartz) is actually on record as saying Harmony was fine to be released as it was. Since Sun also knew that Harmony was under an Apache license (which is the same license that Google used for that part of Android), How can this not be viewed as anything but an implied license?

It goes further than that even. The same CEO is on record as saying he approved of Android and they welcomed the Java language being brought to a lot more people. In fact he will be testifying at trial that Android had his full approval a the time.

If the boss of the company who actually made Java (as opposed to Oracle who just bought Sun after all was already said and done) said on more than one occasion that Harmony was fine and legal as is, and that Android is welcome and they’d like to help however they can, again, how can this not be seen as an implied license?

Sun tried to make a popular mobile OS and failed, Oracle looked at it themselves and realized that they didn’t know enough to pull it off. Someone at that point appears to have decided “stuff it, this is too hard, lets just take a slice of Google’s pie.”

Simple facts (as I understand them),
Sun had no issue with Apache harmony with all the API’s in question under an Apache license and said so publicly and on the record.
Google uses those same Apache harmony API’s in Android under the same Apache license.
Sun (prior to Oracle buying them) also publicly endorsed Android on more then one occasion.
Oracle came and bought Sun after all of this happened and started looking for ways to monetize their investment. (In fact I believe ex Sun employees have said that Oracle were already looking for dirt on Google prior to the Sun sale even completing.)
Oracle are now claiming that Harmony is infringing and that Google is too as a result.

Is it even legal for a company that buys another company to retrospectively contradict their previous CEO’s public announcements when they don’t agree with them? I’d love to hear some explanation of how that is possible.