Image via WikipediaInteresting is, that it might look like the 4 Billion patent buyout could not be very successful for the bidders:
Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened, forcing Microsoft to sell the patents it bought and demanding that the winning group (Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, EMC) give a license to the open-source community, changes the DoJ said were “necessary to protect competition and innovation in the open source software community.” This only reaffirms our point: Our competitors are waging a patent war on Android and working together to keep us from getting patents that would help balance the scales.Now you know why Google bid PI :) I said from the beginning, Google never wanted to spent this much money for patents that can't be enforced easily. And such a big group of companies may not use this power without getting problems from official side. Good. Now have Luck with your patents, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and EMC. We know you.
In the end, Google made everything right. So not spent money for things you can't get much use out of it, don't join the devil and keep on support open software and hardware standards.
[via Official Google Blog]
