Google's Six-Front War

wasimkadak writes "While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and implications of Google's new social network, Google+, it's worth noting that Google isn't just in a war with Facebook, it's at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. In fact, Google is fighting a multi-front war with a host of tech giants for control over some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in technology."

Comments

Patents

[Microlith]

The tech industry is basically building up the greatest case ever to be made for why patents, software patents especially, have transitioned away from their original intention and become far more a hindrance and obstruction rather than a means of getting useful knowledge out from closed circles.

Re:Patents

[countertrolling]

...their original intention...

That's the part that everybody has gotten wrong so far.. Patents and copyrights are designed from the beginning to restrict the transfer and sharing of knowledge. If people are going to continue to claim property rights, they should pay a property tax. They should not be permitted to deny a license to use the property, and the government should be allowed to determine a reasonable price. Divulged knowledge is public property, exclusive privileges over it should come with a cost.

Re:Patents

[Microlith]

Patents were made to ensure that in exchange for making information public, the inventor would get temporary exclusivity. The purpose was to get information that would have been held as a trade secret, or in past ages by trade guilds, and potentially lost. Now, of course, patents are useless as they rarely describe HOW to make the item in question, and are instead a vague concept grab and used not to protect the inventor but as clubs to beat others down with.

Copyright is similar, though it was meant to give creators some incentive to create.

If people are going to continue to claim property rights, they should pay a property tax.

They don't claim property rights. They confuse the issue with the poor phrase "intellectual property" even though it isn't.

Divulged knowledge is public property, exclusive privileges over it should come with a cost.

They do come with a cost. Eventually they will lose the exclusive privilege to the information. The problems lie around the laws that make up copyright and patents.

Re:Patents

[martin-boundary]

Who would spend R&D resources just to have others duplicate the finished product with no investment? Patents ensure that creators will have time to recoup costs.

OMG! How on earth did the human race survive for millenia before patents? You're so right, without patents nobody would ever invent anything and we'd all still be living in damp caves arguing about who was going to be the dumbass to pay the development costs of inventing fire...

Re:Patents

[jc42]

... patents are designed to encourage otherwise secret matters to be made publicly available in exchange for a limited monopoly on their use. It would take a face much straighter than mine to claim, at least with respect to matters anywhere near software, that they are other than a mess today; but that was in fact the theory.

Actually, if you consult various histories of the concept of patent, you'll find that restricting patents to new inventions is a rather recent (17th C?) development. Historically, it has long been common to (as the the US Patent Office now does) give a patent to anyone willing to pay the appropriate registration fee.

As usual, wikipedia has an article that describes this, and mentions that it was James I who added the requirement to English law that a patent had to be for something new. He did this in response to some extreme abuse of the patent system to award common commodities (salt is mentioned) as a monopoly to a specific manufacturer, which effectively prevented previous manufacturers from continuing their business.

But this isn't the first documented case of such things. There are a number of descriptions of an ancient Greek cooking contest, in which the winner was awarded a patent for one year, during which nobody else could produce the same dish. There's no hint that the winning entry had to be new; it just had to be the one preferred by the panel of judges, exactly like modern cooking contests.

It's likely that the current US scheme of rewarding a patent for things well known in the industry isn't a corruption, but rather a return to the original use of patent law. It was designed to give a monopoly in exchange for paying whatever fee the local ruler(s) demanded.

(This may seem cynical to modern readers, but it doesn't take much reading of the relevant ancient histories for it to pass from cynicism to understanding that this is one way that rulers have always enriched themselves.)

Re:Patents

[jc42]

It's not about society. It's about protecting specific interests, to protect industry from the effects of new technology that threatens its existence. From Gutenberg's printing press right up through the present and into the future.

Ah, but you're ignoring the well-documented fact that copyright was invented well before Gutenberg. The very name dates from before printing technology, when all texts had to be copied by hand, by scribes. And the first documented copyright had nothing to do with authorship; the concept was invented to control the copying of bibles and other religious texts, whose authors were centuries dead (and often unknown). The function of copyright was to legally restrict the production of religious texts to only the versions officially approved by the local rulers, and to keep the number of copies sufficiently low that only the priesthood could get copies.

The application of copyright to original documents, for economic reasons, was an innovation of the late 15th century, some decades after Gutenberg's work, and a century or so after the first print shops appeared in Europe.

But most of the history of copyright is about limiting the production of hand-copied text to only "authorized" versions, primarily for religious reasons. The extension to commercial transactions is, historically speaking, rather recent.

As is so often true now, there's a useful wikipedia article that summarizes this, and includes some useful links (for people who want to actually understand the history rather than just repeat the current commercial propaganda on the topic ;-).

Re:Patents

[VortexCortex]

The problem is with the term "intellectual property", it's not property. It's government granted and enforced monopolies on the exploitation of ideas. Calling it intellectual property is an instance of framing aka the art of choosing the words to bias the discussion, much like calling tax cuts "tax relief".

It is property because the law allows you to buy, sell, and transfer it.

Right; Just like, sex. In the US state of Nevada, and some other countries, the law allows you to buy and sell sex.

The term is "prostitution". Now, I don't know about you, but my sexual property rights are taxed heavily. Even if I choose not to exercise my ability to sell access to my amazing Johnson, I still have to list all the kinds of sex it can perform as taxable property when I file my taxes. Each time I get paid for sex I loose a little bit of my sexual property -- just like when you sell an idea!

Some clients have bought enough of my sex that they literally own most a majority say in the handling of it. ( You do have to be careful though -- Once, After I sold my sex, the client re-sold it on e-bay, and it was purchased by a 16 year old! I served 5 years for statutory rape! )

I once sold an idea that was so novel, it was in a totally invented on the spot language from a culture that existed only in my mind. A scarce resource like that -- the copyright traders, ie publishers, just had to have it, but they didn't count on the fact that no one but me knew what the strange symbols meant! Due to economics of scarcity, I'm now the richest man on InstainFrigth (that's Earth, but shhhh, don't tell anyone, it devalues my made up language).

Now, Don't tell me when you list your property you don't claim all of your ideas, passing thoughts, and your va-jay-jay!?

Why, those are 10 times more valuable than even a Big Johnson! You should talk to your accountant and maybe a sex or idea lawyer -- You could be liable for serious mental and sexual tax evasion; Even if you don't give a fuck!

I guess next you'll try to tell me that you are born with a head full of all the ideas you'll ever have, and a body full of all the fucks that you will ever give...

Re:Patents

[martin-boundary]

This is really disingenuous. The issue of what we call now intelectual property is not new, and has existed long before patents and copyrights were introduced. Because there was no good mechanism for establishing and enforcing ownership of new inventions and discoveries, many creators refused to make them public, to the disadvantage of everybody else. Many skills and processes were passed only within a family, or a guild, or from master to apprentice, and their secret was jealously guarded.

That's debatable. Guilds were government granted monopolies. They were able to keep their secrets for generations because the local king granted them the privilege of exclusive rights to their trade.

That's the reason why inventions and discoveries were closely guarded: because the guild members *could* - it was their right as guild members, and non-guild members were hunted down with the authorities' blessing.

Real progress did not come from the introduction of the patent system, and never will. Real progress has come from the liberalization of trade, and the breakup of the rigid feudal society. That's what has allowed more people than ever to devote time to inventions and discoveries, without worrying that some existing stakeholder will prevent them from doing so.

People are naturally inventive. They will improve systems and invent better ways of doing the things that matter to them, if we let them. Among the people, there are a small number with science backgrounds, and if we let them, they will invent and discover a lot more than now.

Re:Patents

[martin-boundary]

You can argue that possibly high cost development is a waste and that we're not better off as a society with that sort of R&D, but it seems a stretch to think that it would continue without the promise of financial compensation.

Then why is it that the vast majority of inventors, scientists and artists who create the new inventions, discoveries and works of art, are employed for average salaries?

If your idea was right, then nobody would go to work for Sony, GM, IBM, Monsanto or any corporation that produces patentable tech: those corps can make millions in licensing new technology, yet their employees get 100K odd a year. That's a huge disconnect, that can only be explained by the opposite of your idea: people do in fact invent and create without the promise of monopolistic rights to their inventions.

Those rights mainly matter to sustain an entirely different class of people: not the inventors, scientists and artists, but the managers and investors whose sole concern is maximizing returns. If patents were abolished, they would suffer, but inventors would continue to invent at an increased pace.

Re:Patents

[martin-boundary]

All right, here's a little experiment I just did, I'll give you the steps so you can repeat it.

Quick google search for patent applications

Quick google search for world population

Now cut and paste the data for years 1963-2010. I've used the 5th column (total utility patent applications) as this seems like it might be relevant. Clean up the data a bit:

cat patents.txt | awk '{print $5}' | sed s/,// | grep -v '*' | tac > pat.txt

cat population.txt | egrep '(^19|^20|^21)' | sed s/,//g > pop.txt

Now if you load this in octave, you can make a quick graph:

plot(pop(:,1), pat ./ pop(:,2))

As you can see from the graph, the proportion of patent applications from around the world is roughly constant until about 1990, then it suddenly jumps up.

Obviously, this only represents US patents for a rather short time period compared to human existence, it would be interesting to find data to extend back two centuries if possible.

Does anyone know what happened in 1990 in the US to change the patent application rate?

Re:Patents

[NoOneInParticular]

Does anyone know what happened in 1990 in the US to change the patent application rate?

That's a rhetorical question, right? Beginning 1990's the US courts, in a couple of landmark cases, decided that software patents were legal. What you're seeing is the ensuing land-grab.

Re:Buzzing

[AmigaHeretic]

Yeah, I'm not too excited about anything "Google" that's personalized anymore. I mean I still like Google and they have some great ideas and products and Google is still my home page and my pretty much the only place I search from.

That said I don't trust them to keep anything going long term. Every time I find something useful, it gets taken away, Google Health the most recent on the chopping block. And I'm sure we can make a list of other that have fallen to the wayside. Wave of course. I even dialed 800-Goog-411 the other day to get a phone # and it was gone.

It's hard to want to invest in personalizing anything Google these days. I use to feel secure thinking my "Gmail" account would be around a while. These days I'm not so sure.

Business not a zero sum game

[fermion]

Business is not war. War by definition is a zero sum game. That is, war is used to distribute a resource that for all intents and purposes is fixed in quantity. For instance, war is often used to redistribute land. Now it is used to redistribute petroleum. The war on drugs redistributes drugs to the rich and powerful, leaving the poor with nothing.

Business is different. Business is about creating value where none exists. It is about taking a junk mushroom and turning it into a premium product. It is about taking a piece of land no one wants and turning it into a resort. In the process inefficient companies die, but they are not causalities of war. They are simply relics of a bad past that we are happy to see left behind.

So why is this important? If it is war then we fight to maintain market share, a perceived limited resource, which is what the American automakers diid, which is why MS is doing, which is what all those insurance companies and banks are doing. However if it is not a war then we are in a situation of an expanding and fruitful economy that will grow as we innovate. This si the world in which we have jobs and new toys. This is IBM. This is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation.

If we are at war, we do not innovate, we copy. It is the difference between Google using graph theory to create a index method different from Yahoo and Alta Vista and Google creating an phone not unlike the iPhone. It is the difference between Alta Vista that stood on market share and did not innovate, and Yahoo who understood there was room in search for more than one way to serve the customer.

Re:Business not a zero sum game

[colinrichardday]

War by definition is a zero sum game.

By what definition? I would consider war to be a negative-sum game.

Don't worry

[Daimanta]

As long as Google doesn't invade Russia in the winter everything will be allright.

Re:In case you don't want to read the article

[bonch]

Slashdot in 2001: "Microsoft is evil. They're trying to leverage their success with Windows to take everybody down. They want to conquer everything and have you using Microsoft-branded operating systems, browsers, phones, webjournals, email, and more."

Slashdot in 2011: "Google is awesome. They're leveraging the success of their search engine to enter these markets with their fantastic vision. I can't wait to use Google-branded operating systems, browsers, phones, blogs, email, and more."

Gibber

[ConfusedVorlon]

The first two fronts are misunderstood by the author. I didn't bother reading further.

Front 1) Chrome
He implies that Google is in the browser battle to control the browser and get everybody over to chrome. In fact - google is in the browser battle to raise the game. They're totally happy if ie maintains market share as long as ie does a better job at javascript and html5 so that users can use gmail, google docs, etc.

Google are clearly winning here - all the browsers have significantly improved their javascript performance and standards compliance since Chrome made them start competing again.

Front 2) Android
He implies the reason Android doesn't have the developer support is due to fragmentation of devices. Completely wrong - the reason Android doesn't have developer support is that Google haven't trained everyone to buy apps, and so the financial rewards for developers are way lower.

Apple gets your payment method on day 1, and makes it easy for you to buy stuff with successful instant fulfilment. Google has a crappy dysfunctional checkout system and make no attempts to collect your payment details until you decide to bite the bullet and buy an app. At that point, they make the process painful and unsatisfying so that you are put off from ever trying again.

Re:Business *is* war

[Locutus]

the war Google is fighting is really one of protecting and expanding it's ad revenue generating space. Microsoft is out paying to get BING used as the default search( RIM, Facebook, etc ). If those companies were not out trying to block Google from selling ads they probably would not be fighting so hard to get into all those other places. Look at the phone segment. Apple did a great job on their phone but they were exclusive and expensive. so Google comes in and provides a platform for a huge segment of the market Apple was leaving out and Microsoft was floundering in.

What's really interesting here is that this is a war to block a new paradigm in software and services revenue generation. Google makes money from ad generation and they can share that with the hardware vendors. Mozilla would not be anything like it is today if it were not for the $50+ million they got annually from Google as ad revenue sharing. This scares the shit out of Microsoft, Sony, Apple, the telecoms, etc. They do not want to see their revenue streams diverting to a mechanism they do not control and they are not competent at. The whole Nortel Networks patent buy was basically the old guard blocking the new kid from building a protection wall against them. Right now, you fight patent litigation with more patent litigation but you have to have a patent pool to fight with.

I for one welcome my now overlords since the old overlords have shown they are not interesting in anything but control and locking us into and onto their products. Products which have stagnated when they have had that control. This is war, it just is not a conventional war and I think Google has to get out into those other areas only because companies like Microsoft have been documented it that they are out to put Google down. Not unlike how Bill and Steve decided Netscape must go, Microsoft has decided that Google must go. They are fighting, they have to fight because if they don't Microsoft will shut them down like they shut down Netscape. IMO

LoB

Only search matters

[Animats]

Google revenue: 94% ads. Ad revenue: 70% ads on search pages, 30% ads elsewhere (Adsense, YouTube, etc.). That's what matters.

If Google does anything for which they charge customers money, the customers will expect support. Google hates providing support. They gave up selling Android handsets when they discovered that unhappy customers would call them. Even the rare Google business-to-business products, like the Google Search Appliance, were unsupported. (If it broke during warranty, they shipped you a new one.) This limits Google to ad-supported business lines. Since they already dominate the one really profitable ad-supported business line, search, any area into which they expand is less profitable than the one they're in. So expansion reduces ROI and stock price.

Getting into "social" doesn't help much. Facebook is dinky compared to Google. Facebook has hit its peak size, and it still generates an order of magnitude less revenue than Google.