12.14.06
We Finally Have a Google Category
I am still working on Stafford Masie’s talk at the CITI conference, I hope to have that fully transcribed perhaps later tonight and then there is a lot to discuss, believe me. If you haven’t grabbed the audio and had a listen yourself, it’s worth an hour (Links to OGG and MP3 in this story).
In the meantime, it is an unwritten rule, no blog can go for a full month without running a Google story. So, just in under the deadline…
Google Patent Search
Google has a new feature, in Beta (what else?), called Google Patent Search. I have honestly been playing with it for much of a day now, not getting much writing done as a result. It is a fascinating tool, complete with drawings and all, very interesting and could have some use in the effort to address "legitimate questions about patent quality".
IBM, Yahoo! go After Google
IBM and Yahoo! are teaming up to undercut Google in the enterprise, with a software solution that may put real pressure on Google’s Mini.
Google currently charges $9,000 for a specialized search appliance - a piece of hardware called Google Mini - that can index up to 300,000 documents. The IBM-Yahoo offering undermines the market viability of the Google box in its current form, or at least at its current price, and also poses a threat to the efforts of corporate search specialists like Autonomy to expand into the small-business market.
It also provides another small bit of evidence that, in an age of cheap computing, hardware wants to be software and software wants to be free.
Isn’t that a great way to put it?
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Jamie said,
February 28, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I saw your website at http://boycottnovell.com/2006/12/14/we-finally-have-a-google-category/ and wanted to recommend adding http://www.wikipatents.com to the page. WikiPatents has an extensive database of patents open for public comment on the internet, free patent translation into multiple languages, and allows PDF downloading of patents in addition to other free resources. It is a helpful site for anyone with patent related interests.
Have a great day,
Jamie