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.