[mayanksinghal]

(The argument that I am going to make, has been posted a lot of times before - we need a way to merge threads)

1. You are confusing deals - Novell and Nortel

2. Actually it was (Google + Intel) vs Apple et al.

3. There is no sense - no profit for Google to be a part of bidding group that consists of competitors who are suing Google for IP infringement. Firstly, the deals were not discussed, so we can only guess what MS et al. were offering. So if I were to make a guess, MS et al. would have offered shared usage of Novell patents with (zero or minimal) licensing of IPs with guarantee of no lawsuits. Google would have required these patents, not because it wanted to build products relating to them but because they can be used to defend against other companies when they bring lawsuits on Google. These other companies are MS et al. So being in the same bidding group G to bid for patent set X as the company that wants to (counter-)sue other companies in G using the IPs in X would be illegal because of the contract. Hence, a useless deal for Google.

[ashishgandhi]

The scenario described in point number three is possible, it is also possible that MS and Google could have negotiated a cross-licencing deal of sorts to help their Bing and Android businesses. So we just don't know.

[mayanksinghal]

But there still are Appl et al. involved in the group. Additionally, I don't believe that such a deal would benefit MS. They are earning more from Android than Windows Mobile!