Beoz

2bn is about 2% of Microsoft's annual revenue. Not exactly big bickies in the grand scheme of annual revenue.

I've seen a lot of patents exploited to the point that they are hardly worth pursuing any more.

knockoff nige

But earlier you claimed that it is merely an expense, not profit making. And there is plenty of profit to be made in not developing patents as it removes competition.

$2 billion is no small amount of money. It might be the salary budget for all non executive employees along with a workstation refresh.

GarryP

IIRC mickeysoft profits were somewhere around $16-20bn pa

So, it's about 10%+ of mickeysoft profits - and that's just from Android, then. Put the rest in and you'd have to double that, at least. I've seen numbers up to $8bn.

It's been said mickeysoft would be a better bet if they just sacked the developers, got out of OS, and just put the money into patents and IP licensing. After all, you don't actually have to MAKE anything with that model.

astera

Which is why I stick consider them to be a one-trick pony, despite all the hype about cars, satellites, healthcare, etc.

Ironically they are technically the easiest company on the planet to put out of business. All we need is a major company like Apple or Microsoft or someone like Mozilla to go ad-free, spam-free, take an anti-data-retention stance, and crate a truly equal and non-spying search engine for all internet users. What would be the point in using Google then?

Beoz

If these figures are true, it has nothing to do with R&D.

The first part is just licensing technology to other vendors. Tech companies do that everywhere. Its just selling tech to other companies.

The second part is all part of accounting.

Don't get me wrong, R&D is needed by tech companies, to future proof and to come up with tech they are going to sell in 3+ years time, but in the current financial year, its an overhead, which is why its the first to get cut along with the marketeers when profits take a hit.

Beoz

Bogans still watch Channel 9 in vast numbers despite the serious amount advertisments on there.

If it was all about commercial and advertsing free, the ABC would have killed of Channel 9 by now.

GarryP

It's the output of the R&D, the demonstration that it makes money.

Look at it like this. If the next big thing were holographic display contact lens for AR (as it might be) you could attempt to win that market by designing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling some really hot lens in competition with other manufacturers.

Or you could have a small team beaver away in advance and patent the central tech to make them work.

Do that and you don't really have to compete much - you have so many avenues to making money and marketshare (if you want it).

That's the why of tech companies R&D investment, and why they go after moonshots. Get that central patent and you are guaranteed to make money. It's wrong that its allowed, but that's the rules of the game today. That central patent is like a toll bridge, hard to avoid and a licence to print money.

Beoz

But that's the point, the patents are worth shit. Hololens and Google Glass as a case in point. Slight variation somewhere and the patent is worthless.

Been there done that and lost a patent challenge first hand.

Whilst R&D may have some serious pay off down the line, bean counters only think about this year. Unfortunate as it is, R&D really isn't as big as we would like it to be.

GarryP

I wish patents were more useless than they are (eg more tightly defined and only for truly novel), However Android manufacturers are coughing up ~$15 per phone to mickeysoft as a troll tax because of them. They wouldn't be doing that if they were "worth shit". A strong patent is like the nuke of commercial competition, even the threat of its use is effective.

Beoz

Its easier and cheaper to buy technology off someone else than have a developers and R&D dudes play catch up and once your done with catch up, maintaining what you've caught up to, if you can actually catch up in the first place.

Patents are easy beats.

astera

That could be programming-related, and most bogans would probably state that advertising is the same everywhere.

But if a big entity like Mozilla were to launch its own search engine with no data-retention or ads then this would be an entirely different ball game. Keep in mind that internet users are more aware than bogans who reach for the remote...

Beoz

Really. Firstly Mozilla needs the algorithms and better algo's that Google already has. After all, a search engine is all about finding stuff accurately and fast. There's years of of catch up there. Does Mozilla or anyone really have the appetite for that? Nope.

knockoff nige

It's already happening. DuckDuckGo is growing and has established itself as a choice of default search engines on mobile devices. When the importance of data/identity protection becomes more in demand by users, Google will lose ground and DuckDuckGo will keep growing. Unless Google decide to buy them....

Beoz

Dream on.

.... and coding a quick search engine, comparable to Google, marketing it, making it default on all Android devices, happens overnight.

Ha. Yeah sure you have worked for a software company. Nice try.

knockoff nige

No idea what you're talking about now. DuckDuckGo has started in a similar way to Google in terms of getting its name out there. Word of mouth. I guess you have never used DuckDuckGo and probably never heard of it before today. In your ignorant world, that must mean it didn't exist until today. Companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to compete with Google because they tried to mimic them along with trying to make it appear better or different. The greatest new feature of a search engine is anonymity. That's why DuckDuckGo is doing. There is a compromise at the moment for speed in results and more websites included in searches. But even google had to play catch up in that at one point.

Never said I worked for a software company before. But now I will. I have worked for software companies before. Not sure why that's relevant as I never held a position in marketing or research.