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Yahoo and Facebook Resolve Patent Dispute

Posted by Soulskill on from the sharing-is-caring dept.

benfrog writes "Yahoo and Facebook have resolved their patent dispute. The two companies have struck a deal which brings Yahoo's lawsuit against Facebook to an end and expands their existing ad and content partnership. The two companies confirmed the deal in a press release. No money changed hands."

9 comments

  1. Too bad by sandytaru · · Score: 4, Insightful

    - that the rest of the tech giants don't follow this example and stop feeding the lawyers.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
    1. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "No money changed hands" doesn't mean nothing of value changed hands. It sounds (from the summary) like Facebook is giving Yahoo free ads.

      And regardless, you can't make this kind of deal without "feeding the lawyers."

  2. Fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No money changed hands PUBLICLY.

    There, fixed that for ya.

  3. None? by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

    "No money changed hands."

    Except from both companies into the lawyer's hands.

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  4. Resolved for their benefit, not for ours by protonbishop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's really scary is that all the elephants are making deals to not sue each other, further isolating themselves from the real harm in software patents. They retain full control of their patents thereby raising the barrier to entry for everyone else. The power is consolidating, my friends, and if you don't have a patent war-chest you'll not be invited to play.

  5. Alliances by vlueboy · · Score: 2

    Facebook / Bing, now Facebook / Yahoo. With these models where giant companies can be at war and in love with one another at once, it's safe to conclude there will be many more.
    Though they both already own your Android phone, we're going to end up with Facebook / Google soon enough, and that is not going to be good. The privacy leaks of Facebook cannot be allowed to trickle into the rest of my online life even after I refuse to join FB.

    1. Re:Alliances by fwoop · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Too late. Facebook is expanding their online ad presence outside of facebook, so if you ever gave facebook your age/gender/etc, they'll use that to target ads to you even if you're not logged into facebook. This is starting with Zynga but will go beyond zynga. I'm frankly quite surprised, in this age of privacy concern, that no one has raised a red flag. But I find privacy concern is more about following fads rather than actual privacy.

    2. Re:Alliances by Sir_Sri · · Score: 2

      That's always the great risk for facebook. As long as they were a small outfit no one really cared what they did. Now that they have billions in revenue and worthwhile valuation and sizable number of customers governments are going to start looking at what exactly they're up to.

      Whether facebook can convert their billions into favourable laws remains to be seen, but all it takes is one privacy 'mistake' on their part (think google grabbing wifi data) and the government could land on them like a tonne of bricks. Which is as it should be in the case of facebook, but it doesn't seem like the people running the show at Facebook take this risk seriously yet.

      Not that you ever want any company to be ruled by lawyers with an iron fist, demanding products never risk anything. But Facebook is going to get burned sooner or later.

  6. the real losers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So another mega-corporate "partnership" has been born from this patent litigation. Doubtless such an arrangement will benefit both Yahoo! and Facebook; but I predict that consumers will eventually be the losers in this deal.