microsoft - 4/5 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

Editorial: Was Google's Purchase Of Motorola More About Damage Control Than Patent Woes?

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials, Motorola

If you head over to FOSSPatents this morning, you'll find a rather lengthy article about Google's acquisition of Motorola that ends with the following conclusion:

Google bought MMI to prevent the worst for Google's strategy, not to make things better for everyone else.

In a way, the $12.5 billion price represents protection money. But not in the way most people seem to think.

FOSSPatents

This statement is obviously contrary to the heaps of coverage the Motorola-Google deal received from major news outlets, blogs, and Android enthusiasts. Us included. This deal was to protect Android from the evils of Apple and Microsoft, with patents.

Aug

Editorial: Google Needs To Stop Playing The Victim, Even If The Patent System Is Broken

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials, News

When Google's General Counsel, David Drummond, posted the first real public response by the search giant to the intellectual property war being waged on Android, the techblogosphere just about peed their collective pants in excitement. Everyone loves a good flame war, it's true. Google called out Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle - by name - publicly. It doesn't get much better than that.

Unfortunately, this probably isn't going to help Google's ongoing battles with those companies, and it's not going to help the company's public image, either. Google isn't a tech startup anymore, they're a multinational corporation. And we need to start looking at them that way, especially when it comes to lawsuits.

Jul

Schmidt To Apple: Stop Litigating And Start Innovating

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Android OS, HTC, News

In a recent patent suit between HTC and Apple, the US International Trade Commission found the Taiwanese manufacturer liable on two counts of patent infringement in its Android-based devices (see our earlier post for a detailed analysis of the case and its effects).

Although this suit only involves Apple and HTC, its legal ramifications could affect Android as a whole - since the alleged infringements are core parts of the Android OS developed by Google.

Giving his views at Google's Mobile Revolution conference in Tokyo, Google's mouthpiece and executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has hit back with a stinging criticism of Apple's lawsuits.

May

Lodsys Patent Trolling Starting To Target Android App Devs - OK, Now It's Personal

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Apps/Games, Editorials, News

You've all probably heard bits and pieces of news about a company called Lodsys in the last couple of weeks, (they've been "patent trolling" iOS app developers) even if you don't really keep up on all things fruit-related. If you're not familiar with the story, let me give you a quick rundown.

Lodsys is what we affectionately refer to as a "patent troll" - a company that buys up promising and often vague or [overly] broad patents in a hope of using them to threaten to sue the pants off people that they know might be infringing on them. Let me say that again - they find a patent, find out how many people might be infringing it, and then decide to buy it.

May

Skype Acquired By Microsoft For $8.5 Billion, Security Vulnerabilities Feel Right At Home

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

As of this morning, Skype is now officially tucked safely away in Redmond with its new Daddy: Microsoft. For a reported $8.5 billion MS has acquired the VoIP giant with plans to implement it into future products. The question on everyone's mind is, of course, what does this mean for Android? Aside from the guaranteed increase in security risks (I kid, I kid), MS claims that they "will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms," so we'll have to wait and see exactly what that really means.

REDMOND, WA, and LUXEMBOURG, 10 May 2011 - Microsoft Corp.

Apr

[WTF] Barnes & Noble Responds To Microsoft's Android Lawsuit, Reminds Us Why MS Is The Devil

Posted by Brad Ganley in Android OS, Editorials, News, NOOKcolor (Encore)

Last month, Microsoft took bookseller Barnes & Noble, the company responsible for the Nook and Nook Color, to court over some patents infringed because B&N used the Android operating system in the Nook and Nook Color. This is definitely nothing new in the world of mobile devices. It happens all the time, especially with companies like Apple and Microsoft trying to take complete dominance of every arena they enter. That's not the big story here. The big story is the extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY douche-tastic way Microsoft is trying to attack Android with these patents.

One of Android's biggest advantages (besides being vastly superior, of course) is that it costs exactly nothing.

Mar

QuickOffice Pro HD For Honeycomb Now Available, Spreadsheets Imminent

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Has your XOOM experience just been incomplete without the ability to view Power Point presentations and Excel spreadsheets? Well, hold on to your triple mocha decaf vanilla sugar free latte, then - QuickOffice Pro HD has arrived to super-size your productivity for maximum tablet utility.

Seriously, though, QuickOffice is a must-have if you need to view formatted documents as part of justifying that Honeycomb-tablet purchase. In addition to reading Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files (both the old 2003 and 2007+ file versions), QuickOffice Pro comes with a powerful file browser utility that hooks into your Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, Huddle, SugarSync, and MobileMe accounts to make accessing your cloud-synced documents a breeze.

Mar

Microsoft Suing Barnes & Noble For Not Paying Android-Related Patent Fees For Nook Color

Posted by Will Shanklin in News, NOOKcolor (Encore)

Microsoft announced today that they are filing legal action against Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec for their collaborative role in manufacturing the Nook Color. Why would Microsoft be suing for anything even remotely related to the Nook Color? As you probably know, the Nook runs a version of Android and Microsoft owns several patents which it claims Android violates. Microsoft says that anyone making an Android device needs to pay them, or else they are going to do as they have done today - and sue them.

"The Android platform infringes a number of Microsoft’s patents, and companies manufacturing and shipping Android devices must respect our intellectual property rights.

Feb

[Weekend Poll] Is The Nokia/Microsoft Alliance A Threat To Android?

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Development, Polls

Last Updated: September 3rd, 2011

This is the newest in our Weekend Poll series. For last week's, see The Great Divide: Is The Tablet/Phone Split Going To Hurt Android?

It's official: Nokia and Microsoft have formed a strategic alliance. Which, in layman's terms, means Nokia smartphones will be powered by Windows Phone 7, and search across all Nokia devices will be powered by Bing. What does this mean for Android, though?

Well, who knows. On the one hand, this is a move by Nokia to try to stop hemorrhaging customers, especially from the highly profitable smartphone segment. But it may already be too late; they've already given up an awful lot of ground.