> The Chronicle’s **Will Kane**, one of the reporters covering last week’s BART demonstrations, overheard more or less – the longer quotes in the following aren’t verbatim, but approximations of what was said, says Kane – the following exchange: > > Angry older male protester to officer: “You cop, you’re a pig. You bitch. You’re a bitch. That’s all.” > > Angry older female protester to angry older male protester: “Excuse me, sir, can you please not use a derogatory term for females, even when you’re insulting a cop.” > > Angry older male: “Oh, OK. I am sorry. You’re right.” > > African American male cop, at whom the angry older male had been yelling, lifting his shield: “I can assure you, ma’am, that that didn’t offend me. I’ve been called a lot worse.” > > Angry older female: “Don’t talk to me, you pig.” Only in San Francisco.

> In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward. The worst part of this news is that some will read it as proof that trying to compete with Apple with an integrated hardware/software solution is the wrong approach.

It’s not the wrong approach. It’s just an approach that needs time and lots of losing quarters to work. The product needs to evolve, the platform needs to grow slowly over time. And a company like HP doesn’t have the patience for that.

I would feel bad about this, as I was a Palm customer for years, and I still feel some sort of strange kinship with the old company and with Jon Rubenstein, who I met once. I was rooting for WebOS, as a lot of other Apple fans were. But it wasn’t to be.

At the end of the day, I had never spent a dime of my own money on any WebOS product. So what right do I have to feel bad when the platform doesn’t survive?

And don’t think this is a failure of the integrated solution. The old Microsoft model of licensing doesn’t work, either. Android and Windows Phone are proving that. (Yes, Android is falling apart. Keep watching Google’s behavior over the next few months. They had one good year in 2010, and this year has all been downhill. And they know they need a change to salvage the thing.)

The bottom line is that no one has figured out how to beat Apple at this. And it doesn’t look like anyone will anytime soon.

You hear people say all the time that they want Apple to have strong competitors, because it’s good for Apple to have competitors to keep it on its toes. But that’s never really been true, has it? Apple generally just doesn’t pay attention to its competitors. Sure, they steal an idea or two from time to time, but does anyone think that notification center NEVER would have happened without Android?

And competition just for its own sake is useless. What Apple needs is WORTHY opponents, and it doesn’t have any.

> They’re a leading home device maker, and that’s also a big opportunity,” Google CEO Larry Page said of Motorola on Monday. “We’re working with them in the industry to really accelerate innovation. By “accelerate innovation” Page means shoving free Google TV-enabled Motorola set-top boxes down the throats of consumers via the cable companies, and then claiming victory in market share over Apple.

They couldn’t sell the crappy Google TV to consumers, but that doesn’t mean they can’t bundle it to Comcast and Time Warner. Why improve the product into something people actually like when you can just buy the company that has all the licensing deals with providers? That way people will own a Google TV, whether they want one or not.

Same old Google.

> The high-level talks between Google and Motorola started about five weeks ago. Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha were talking directly, and only a handful of executives were brought into discussions. Our sources suggest that Android co-founder Andy Rubin was brought into the talks only very recently. Like I said earlier, this move was more about defense than any sort of long-term mastermind plan, as suggested by the delusional Dan Lyons.

The short span of time suggests that this was a REACTION to losing the Nortel bid, not part of the Nortel original plans. And the fact that they didn’t even bring in their key Android executive until late in the process suggests that it was, as I said before, a gut reaction, rather than a well-considered tactical move. They are panicking over there, and it’s starting to show. Honeycomb 3.0 was a disaster. Google is gaining no traction in the tablet space. Mobile phone market share growth—the only stat where Google was clearly winning—has slowed (even after rigging the numbers by counting cheap Chinese knockoffs as Android phones.) Microsoft is clearly still trying to muscle its way into the space, and could even still carve a niche for itself, especially if it keeps trying to buy more of Google’s partners. And even with strong market share, Google is still making little money with the Android initiative.

This Motorola purchase could very well backfire on Google, or it could turn out well, if they play their cards right. The problem is, Google has never been any good at the cards.

So it all depends on whether Google is ready to take Android into the territory of a “walled garden” as so many like to call the Apple approach. Drop the other partners, start making “Google” phones for real. Didn’t work for the Nexus series, but then again, the most dedicated Android fans all say that the Nexus phones were better than anything else out there. Maybe they can pull that off, but I doubt it. Not without a retail strategy in place.

That does seem to be the eventual plan, though. The question is, what happens in the short term to Google’s numbers if HTC, Samsung, etc. see the writing on the wall and jump ship before Google can get a decent line of Motorola Android phones going?

And what will all those Google fanboys say when Android suddenly becomes available on only one brand of phones?

The most important thing we can take away from all of this is that Google is not playing on its own turf. It no longer controls Android’s destiny, if it ever did. Apple is still the only company in tech playing offense.

> And today it all makes sense. Google just sandbagged its rivals. The whole thing was a rope-a-dope maneuver. Google never cared about the Nortel patents. It just wanted to drive up the price so that AppleSoft (those happy new bedmates) would overpay. Today, with the Motorola deal, Google picks up nearly three times as many patents as AppleSoft got from Novell and Nortel. More important, Google just raised the stakes in a huge way for anyone who wants to stay in the smartphone market. > > Better yet, Google got its rivals to spend a few weeks defending the practice of using patents to attack other companies. Apple fanboys bent over backward to say that Apple was doing the honorable thing here by suing everyone in sight. All this slimy patent warfare that is so despicable when others do it becomes magically noble when Apple does it. Teaming up with other companies, including the evil Borg, to gang up on Google is all perfectly legitimate, par for the course, smart business practice, blah blah. > > So now Google fires back, makes a huge acquisition, gets into the hardware business, buys up the best IP portfolio in the mobile space — and can position itself as a victim that’s just trying to defend itself against this gang of bullies. And people say Apple fanboys drink the Kool Aid.

Let’s start with “nearly three times the patents.” Yes, Google acquires nearly three times the patents in this deal than they would have from Nortel. They also paid nearly three times as much. (12.5 billion vs. 4.2 billion. AND they wouldn’t have been on the hook for that entire 4.2 billion; they could have joined the consortium and paid a fraction of that.)

Next: “Google just raised the stakes in a huge way for anyone who wants to stay in the smartphone market.” Huh? They’re playing catchup here. Nothing more. Our broken patent system and the recent influx of patent troll companies raised the stakes over a year ago, and Google was losing—badly. Remember, this is the company that claims to not believe in patents; in order for Google to “win” on its own terms, or to “raise the stakes” it would have had to do something that made patents irrelevant, not just drop a bomb of cash to play along by everyone else’s rules.

I’m not faulting Google for playing along, mind you; they really didn’t have any choice. But to say this is some brilliant maneuver is silly. It’s defense, plain and simple. And it’s a risky defense at that, considering how it will certainly strain Google’s relationships with other hardware partners.

Next: “Apple fanboys bent over backwards to say that Apple was doing the honorable thing.” NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE has said that any of Apple’s behavior when it comes to patents has been “honorable.” I’ve seen lots of defenses along the lines of “well, the system is broken, and Apple just has to play within the confines of the system” type arguments. But that’s a long shot from calling any side in the patent war “honorable.”

And finally: Google can “position itself as a victim that’s just trying to defend itself against a gang of bullies.” Yeah, that, or they can position themselves as a bunch of whiny hypocrites who once claimed that patents were evil, but now are going to start using the very evil they once denounced to kill off smaller competitors like Microsoft, HP, RIM. Once again, Google does what is best for Google, and everyone else can go stick it. “Don’t be evil” my ass.

My guess is that most Apple fans will see Google’s move as interesting, albeit unimaginative. They lost HUGE in the Nortel thing, so they turned around and made a somewhat bold and probably not completely well thought out acquisition to remedy their mistake. They dropped a lot more money and added baggage to already strained partner relationships because they don’t know how to play the game properly.

It fits into Google’s usual pattern. Smart people, lousy at politics. The question is whether the long-term benefit of having better legal defenses will outweigh the strain this move will put on partners like HTC, Samsung, etc.

Remember, not too many people were suing Google, anyway. Most of the suing has been between Apple, Microsoft, and Google’s partners. This acquisition doesn’t protect HTC or Samsung at all. If Google starts filing motions to intervene in those lawsuits, than I’ll be happy to call that move “honorable.” Somehow, I don’t see that happening, though.