Steve Jobs wins: Apple, Google meet to negotiate terms of Android surrender

August 30, 2012 by Bill Palmer

by Bill Palmer

Days after U.S. federal courts handed Apple a landmark win in its patent case against leading Android vendor Samsung and set legal precedent for Apple to score similar victories against other Android vendors including Google itself, Apple and Google are reportedly meeting today to discuss the matter. While some outlets are diplomatically referring to the meeting as “talks,” the more accurate description would be terms of surrender…

Google had tried the “hail mary” move of buying Motorola Mobility simply to acquire its ancient patents, in the hopes that itself and its vendors could use those patents to defend themselves against Apple in the ongoing Android lawsuits. However, the jury in the Apple v. Samsung case gave those obsolete patents no weight, and threw out Samsung’s entire countersuit. Additionally, the jury ruled that Samsung’s patent violations went beyond mere hardware copycatting and included core components of the Android interface itself. This leaves Google with no leverage going forward, and the fear that Apple could sue Google to get the entire Android operating system shut down. There was also the fear on Google’s part that current Android vendors might change to a different operating system such as Windows Phone 8 or BlackBerry 10, in order to avoid the ingoing legal hassles associated with using the Android operating system…

There’s no word on what Apple will demand now that Google has come to the table. But with Apple holding all the chips and Google having no cards left to play, the meeting is likely to resemble that of a negotiation of terms of surrender. Although it was awarded more than a billion dollars from Samsung, Apple has made clear that it doesn’t want (or need) the money. Instead it wants products which copycat the iPhone and iPad removed from the market. The late Steve Jobs made clear that he was willing to go “thermonuclear” on Google if that’s what it took to get the “stolen product” eliminated. Today, for the first time, it appears Google is afraid that Apple might be able to do just that, and is instead looking for a settlement despite the fact that any cease-fire will now be weighted almost entirely in Apple’s favor. These terms of surrender should be interesting, but it’s clear today that Steve Jobs has scored another victory despite having been deceased for the better part of a year. Earlier this year Adobe killed off mobile Flash development for all platforms, which Jobs had long argued was an antiquated technology which needed to be retired.