[nextparadigms]

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.

[hullo]

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.