Google vs Rockstar Bidco
Apple and Microsoft team up to dethrone Google.
It’s one of the strangest business deals I’ve heard of in a while, but Apple, MS, and RIM (Blackberry), among others, team up to take the Nortel patent portfolio away from Google. Yes, that is all but one major cellphone manufacturer partnering to stop the flood of Android.
“It’s not like Android’s free. Android has a patent fee. You do have to license patents.”
That was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in an interview last year with The Wall Street Journal. At the time, Microsoft was on the verge of releasing their first Windows Phone 7 devices, and knew their best hope in the market would be to go after Android — the same OS which quickly ran Windows Mobile into extinction. In the months that have followed, right or wrong, it looks like Microsoft is slowly but surely forcing Google’s OEM partners for Android to agree with this stance.
