Nortel Patent Auction: Was Google Bored Or Confident By Bidding PI

[engine]

Nortel Patent Auction: Was Google Bored Or Confident By Bidding PI [reuters.com]

At the auction for Nortel Networks' wireless patents this week, Google's bids were mystifying, such as $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128.

Math whizzes might recognize these numbers as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, but it puzzled many of the people involved in the auction, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation on Friday.

"Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers," one of the sources said. "It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi," the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.

"Either they were supremely confident or they were bored."

Earlier story
Nortel Patents Snapped Up By Apple, Microsoft and Others [webmasterworld.com]

[walkman]

That is why it was amusing, they did something that had big implications but zero risk. Not a show stopper, just fun.

Unless, maybe pissing off the other side? Google was pretty bidding alone and they had 4-5 rich opponents, so $100 million each it's a quick $500 million. Google trying funny games, eh? Good, shall we add another $50 million each?

Google showed everyone how smart and intellectual they are. Wonderful, but it's getting a bit old. Like me wearing a speedo to the beach. Cute 25 years ago. Now, not so much.

Totally agree, but in a sense it's like me bragging to a much smarter person than me. I would look like a total jackass. 'Cute things' are one thing, patents are another and Google doesn't even rise to Top 50 there. I am sure those engineers in the top 50 know some math, no? Who decided that Google engineers are smarter than others? Oh because they have a great public relations department?

Name one true Google innovation in the past few years? I'm waiting....changing the color on links to make more money ain't one, sorry :).

[np2003]

ahh Google getting cocky. It would be so good if there was a Google day where every webmaster in the world added (User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / ) to their robots.txt file for a month, see how long Google survives after that.

[Vamm]

So far, np2003, every single site I visit added Google's +1 button in no more than two days after release; and I still search with Google because for queries I need it beats the hell out of Bing. If Google decides to delist an e-commerce site, the site either shuts down or the webmaster gets worried sick, no other option.

So, while you may consider "Google Bot Disallow" nice, actual situation is the other way round - webmasters go like "Oh, my God, we being hit with Panda, I gonna lay off people, they die of hunger!1", invent terms like "Pandalized" and so on, while the Google is like "okay now we done with Panda, lets' bid PI because it is funny. Trololo!".

[Hugene]

Big mistake not to get their hands on these patents. Android will be a moving target for patent lawsuits in the next 10 years at least. Even-though 4.5 G$ seems steep for 6000 patents.

[randle]

"It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi," the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.

The only debate is wether this behavior was classless, immature or arrogant. Theres a place and time to show how funny, smart and cute you can be, but this definitely was not it.

[Maurice]

@wheel
It doens't realy make them look stupid as I said its the meta game here.

If your fairly sure that competitor x has this model of how the bids are going to go throwing a curve ball puts them outside the comfort zone.

They also may be using the outside perspective of Google being a group of uber nerds - playing up to thier image - to later subvert it. The same way poker players like Devilfish uses his persona.

you know like "OMG Google are going to go all Leroy jenkins on us, better get out while we can"

and if it was us phone companies complaining well we all know they are they are the kids on the varity club sunshine bus when it comes to brains.

[almighty monkey]

'Effin hell, guys. Lighten up.


I thought it was pretty funny.

[webdoctor]

Wrong place, wrong time. It's inappropriate behavior.

You want to play those games when you're hiring employees, that's one thing. Playing games with millions of dollars of stockholders' money is another matter entirely.

So you'd all be OK with this if Google had bid $3.14158 billion - or $3.14160 billion - just not $3.14159 billion?

<sigh>