In your comment below, you're confusing Nortel with Novell. Google was NOT asked to bid for Nortel patents together with Microsoft.
And about the Novell ones - is it still not clear why Google did it? They did it to get defensive patents against Microsoft. How would they have used those patents to counter Microsoft, if Microsoft had them, too?
The whole point of buying patents now is to use them to keep Microsoft and the others from attacking the Android manufacturers. If they buy them together with Microsoft, they can't stop Microsoft's other patents.
Yes, true. but: that doesn't matter, at least to the argument in question.
a. Google complains that these companies were colluding against them in the Novell deal.
b. Microsoft shows that they were not in fact colluding against them in the Novell deal.
Whether or not it would have made business sense for Google to join that pool (it clearly wouldn't have) doesn't matter within the narrow scope of whether they're entitled to complain using the specific words they've chosen to make their complaint, which, for whatever reason, people seem to really enjoy discussing on the internet this week.
They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android...
But Google had the choice to be a part of the consortium, according to Microsoft's counsel. Assuming that invitation was indeed extended, how does that jive at all with what you just quoted?
If you think about it, it's obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft's objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn't fall for it.
I did confused Nortel and Novell. My mistake. The biggest issue I guess I have is that, in addition to causing a fair bit of confusion, David Drummond didn't do Google any favors by originally writing as if they were also excluded from being included in the Novell buy. It's easy to backtrack once your competition has some illuminating facts to put out into the open.
I'm of the opinion that there aren't really any true winners, at least in the public's eye, in patent bidding wars. But Google has definitely stumbled through the post-bidding PR.
Microsoft invited Google to be apart of Novell's patents NOT Nortel's 4.5B war chest of patents.
If Google wanted to buy Novell's patents and use them as defensive patents - it makes little sense for them to go in partnership with the company it's trying to defend themselves against.
See my other reply on this thread. Basically Google believes the bidding represents anticompetitive behavior on the part of a cartel of android competitors.
Read Google's post again. That's where it's explained. Note that the following is not necessarily my opinion, but my interpretation of Google's post.
Google believes that a cartel of competitors formed to combine resources with the main purpose of using those resources to bid on IP to use against Android. The winning bid didn't reflect any individual competitor's valuation of the asset, but rather the aggregate of their valuations given that they all plan to use the asset as leverage against Android. Google thinks this is anticompetitive.
I read Google's post and Microsoft's response and Google's update to the post and Microsoft's response to the update as well: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/04/gentlemen-take-this-outside...
Considering all arguments, I think there is more to this story than what Google told in the blog post.
The fact that they did not even mention that they were offered to be part of the joint bid in the initial post raises a lot of questions.
Its fine for you to think that. I'm just discussing the merits of Gruber's post. I think he is trying to spin as whining what Google believes to be a legitimate claim of anticompetitive behavior.