Sam Varghese
Thursday, 18 March 2010 12:53
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
A statement by Microsoft about the patent suit which Apple recently filed against mobile phone manufacturer HTC has resulted in some rather alarmist commentary today.
Some background: Apple
filed its suit on March 2, leading at least one commentator to
speculate that this was more of a strike against Google than anything against HTC itself. This, because HTC has recently started to sell some phones under its own name, some of which run Android. That's a bit of a stretch in my book.
This morning AEST, we have Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice-president and deputy general counsel, issuing
a statement in support of Apple's lawsuit.
Of course, Gutierrez, like many of his colleagues, loves to instill as much fear as he can among all and sundry in order to hike up the fear factor. This is a tactic that has been used by companies, governments and individuals since time immemorial. (As an aside, the BBC's Adam Curtis released
a wonderful documentary about this a few years ago.)
Microsoft never misses a chance to try and scare smaller companies for
all kinds of reasons.
Gutierrez' pronouncement has resulted in
sensationalist headings which serve only one purpose - they serve as space-fillers for
sites which cannibalise other people's work, they increase the number of clicks on said commentary, and they make generally sensible commentators look a bit foolish.
