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Google's Schmidt: Patent Wars Harm Startups

Nerval's Lobster writes "Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt opened up to The Wall Street Journal in a Dec. 4 interview. Among the topics covered: the status of his company's ongoing patent war with Apple, as well as its attempts to make the Android mobile operating system more of a revenue giant. In Schmidt's mind, startups have the most to lose in the current patent wars: 'There's a young [Android co-founder] Andy Rubin trying to form a new version of Danger [the smartphone company Mr. Rubin co-founded before Android]. How is he or she going to be able to get the patent coverage necessary to offer version one of their product? That's the real consequence of this.'"

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  1. Wrong Link; Wrong Message. by tuppe666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is the link to the interview http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323717004578159481472653460-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNDEwNDQyWj.html or maybe it only shows a summery depending who you are. I personally interpreted the article completely different; My summery would have been "Irrelevant Microsoft", but it touches on issues such as the antitrust case; owing a phone hardware company while expecting others to use your OS; The issue of Goggles relationship with Apple [Where WSJ got its title] all worthwhile topics of discussion, but as I said the thing I derived from it was Microsoft not being part of the "Gang of Four", and its products not even worth commenting on.