With terrible sales and no sign of turnaround, Palm’s options are whittling down to one: buyout. Ex-Appler Phil Kearney sees a buyer in Google, which, in its looming megawar with Apple, might need Palm as much as Palm needs it.

In looking at the brewing battle between Apple and HTC, it is interesting to me to see everyone asking if and when Google will get involved. I think that Google will eventually have to get involved and that is exactly what Apple is anticipating. I worked at Apple for seven years guiding their home wireless development and innovation and I can tell you first hand that folks at Apple are crafty, deliberate and thoughtful. People are exactly right in assuming that Google is going to have to eventually get involved if for no other reason then the fact that some lawyer worth his salt at HTC wrote the contract with Google such that contract has indemnification clauses which require Google to get involved and Apple knows that.

Even if Google has no indemnification obligations to HTC, the Apple/HTC patent war has to be more about Android and Google than anything else. Apple doesn’t want a cross-patent agreement with HTC because HTC only has a relative handful of patents. Apple has over $30 billion in the bank so they can’t possibly want money from HTC. So what could motivate Apple to want to sue HTC? I’m in agreement with those who theorize that Apple’s HTC suit is to warn hardware manufacturers against using Android in their new product offerings. But in thinking about this issue, the one way I see that Google might be able to combat such a move would be to acquire some good patents of their own. In perusing some of the articles on the web about the Apple/HTC battle, a couple of them referred to older articles that talk about Palm and the possible patent battles between Palm and Apple. It is interesting that an Apple/Palm patent battle has not materialized thus far and, combined with Palm’s recent announcement about cutting guidance, it got me thinking: Why doesn’t Google just buy Palm, it’s a no-brainer?

I understand that some people might think it would be too expensive for another company to buy Palm just for their patents, but when you get right down to it Palm is a cheap acquisition, even at a premium over the roughly $800 million that they’re worth today. With a market cap of over $180 billion, Google would be spending less than 1% of their market cap on Palm and they would get a lot more in return than just the patents. Nokia or Motorola too could both easily afford to buy Palm with a hefty premium just to get their patents and it wouldn’t be an overly large investment either company. To me, the price is right and the opportunity cost of not buying Palm is just too high for anyone, including Google, that wants to compete in the post-PC world of the second decade of the 21st century and beyond.

There are a myriad of other reasons too why it makes sense for Google to buy Palm and this looming patent war with Apple simply adds impetus to such a decision. Think about all of the good things that Google would get out of buying Palm. Google gets every tool which it currently lacks but needs to successfully try to compete with Apple in the smartphone and other post-PC businesses over the long haul.

First and foremost, Google gets all of Palm’s patents and we know their patent pool is both large and effective. Palm has been at this for nearly twenty years, giving them lots of patents including some older patents which nicely counter any patent claims Apple could make. It could be very likely that the reason we’ve never seen any direct patent battles yet between Palm and Apple is because Apple’s legal folks looked over the Palm portfolio and decided that Apple infringed on as many Palm patents as Palm did on Apple patents so that a patent war with Palm wasn’t really a good idea.

If this is the case, then Google getting ownership of Palm’s patent portfolio could be paramount given that Apple’s attack on HTC looks to me personally a lot like the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia or the German invasion of Belgium at the beginning of World War One. Like the start of that awful war, this Apple/HTC battle could lead to a much larger conflict especially given that there was already a Nokia/Apple battlefront opened earlier. If for nothing other than their patents, Google should buy Palm. But beyond the patents, Google would get many more tools that they need if they hope to compete with Apple in the long term in the smartphone arena.

Google would also get a solid group of WebOS software developers, many of whom actually developed the first iPhone OS while at Apple and could have been involved in filing many of the original iPhone patents. In addition, if we look under the hood of WebOS and Android then we can see that they are cousins in terms of architecture and implementation. Both WebOS and Android are children of Linux and pretty closely related which means that the folks who developed WebOS could jump right in and augment the core developers of Android. Or perhaps Android and WebOS could be molded together to form one operating system that Google could formally license to all of the hardware manufacturers out there who are looking to use Android on their platforms today. Using the WebOS team, Google could combine all of the great WebOS features with Android and would have an even better operating system for their own hardware and potential licensees.

But that’s not the only software advantage that Google gets through a Palm acquisition. By making Google employees of the entire WebOS team, it also gives Google a ready group of new shock troops to help them go to battle with Apple. Yes the WebOS folks at Palm would be a welcome addition to Google to help staff up their increasing Android development needs, but let’s not forget that the key folks who left Apple after creating the original iPhone OS all jumped off the Cupertino Mothership to go to Palm for a reason. They were evidently unhappy with something, so I bet they’d have no problem contributing to any war effort against Apple.

Beyond augmenting Google’s Andorid OS development capabilities with an influx of new team members, the acquisition of Palm also gives Google a brand new capability. It gives them the mobile phone hardware design capability that they’re currently relying on folks like HTC to do for them. Farming out one’s hardware development is no way to compete with the iPhone. Heck, neither is farming out your software development and the mobile phone design incumbents like Nokia and Motorola have finally woken up to this fact. To directly compete with Apple in any credible way over the long term, a company needs to own and control all of the engineering components needed to create a good smartphone platform. There is a crack team of hardware engineers & designers over at Palm, some of whom came over directly from Apple too. Google needs a hardware group for future Android products and the Palm hardware team fills that need very nicely. I know some folks have gotten Palm phones with bad screens or keyboards, but let’s not confuse bad design with bad manufacturing. I think the Palm hardware designs are good but the contract manufacturer in China may not be not doing enough quality control on parts and assembly.

Google also gets a couple of other pieces of the business about which I think people who have never developed mobile phones always seem to forget. First among these is Palm’s entire carrier relations team. Having a whole department full of people with years and years of experience in managing the relationships with all the carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile and Vodaphone is a business capability that shouldn’t be taken lightly and, come to think of it, had Apple had such a group when originally developing the iPhone perhaps all of their U.S. customers might not be stuck to only being on the AT&T network.

Then there is the technical support capability and support infrastructure that Palm has built over the years to teach the carriers how to support each new mobile phone that Palm releases. I’ve heard a couple of the support horror stories about the Nexus One and if they are true then Google needs all of the help it can get in training and supporting the technical support organizations of each mobile phone operator that decides to carry their Android phones.

I have lots of friends at Apple and I have lots of friends at Palm so I don’t want it to seem like I’m just trying to paint Apple as the bad guy here or trying Palm as desperate. I want more than anything for my friends at Palm to be successful. But I can’t believe for a second that I’m the only one thinking this Palm acquisition idea over. I have to imagine that there’s a team at Google, one at Microsoft, one at Nokia and Motorola too and even one at Apple who are going through this same analysis. I have to also imagine that they are all coming up with the same conclusions. Acquiring Palm could do a lot to shore up any smartphone business and make that company a serious competitor in the marketplace over the coming decade. To me though, only Google just seems to be the right fit at the right time for a Palm acquisition. Palm gives Google everything they need to make Google-branded Android smartphones serious competitors to the iPhone. But will it happen? Only time will tell.

Phil Kearney is the wireless networking geek who built the AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express and Time Capsule when he worked at Apple. He got his first Apple II computer in 1980 at age 13 and has been an Apple fan ever since. In his spare time he drinks great wine, eats fantastic food and is known to play a good bit of online poker.

Apple’s lawsuit against HTC made one thing clear: Steve. Jobs. Will. Cut You. And with all the patents they’ve got? Nobody’s safe. Here’s who’s next on the subpoena warpath:

Patent #8,567,301: A Process to Cryogenically Microbead Pasteurized Dairy
Defendant: Dippin’ Dots

Patent #5,475,939: Inexpensive Self-Assembled Home Furnishings With Names That Sound Like Lesser Norse Gods
Defendant: Ikea

Patent #6,374,752: Constructing an Opulent Hyper-Futuristic City Without Having the Resources to Maintain It
Defendant: Dubai

Patent #3,405,356: Music Composition Utilizing Three Chords In Sequence and Repetitive Anti-Establishment Lyrics
Defendants: Joey Ramone; Iggy Pop; Johnny Rotten; et al

Patent #2,366,291: How a Bill Becomes a Law
Defendants: Congressional and Executive Branches of US Government; “School House Rock”

Patent #4,769,002: Placing “I” Before “E” (Excepting Those Occasions In Which Preceded By “C” Or When Phonetically Comparable to “A”)
Defendants: Strunk and White; My Third Grade Homeroom Teacher; the English Language

Patent #9,753,482: Achieving Fame Despite Lack of Discernable Talent or Drive
Defendants: Paris Hilton, Spencer Pratt, the Cast of “Tool Academy,” et al

Patent #1,749,682: Dogs
Defendants: Dogs

Apple has sued Google’s phone manufacturer for infringing on 20 iPhone patents. Not so long ago, Apple and Google were a nice couple. Then, everything went to hell.

The romance began with the iPhone, even while we didn’t know about it in 2006. Back then, Steve Jobs invited Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt to his house, to sit at his table, and have vanilla-frosted cupcakes and tea together. It was instant love.

An Affair to Remember

They happily worked in the iPhone’s 2007 launch. Google gave Apple their maps, their search, and their mail, and Apple gave Google the best spot in their new shiny device. Apple put YouTube into the iPhone and Google made YouTube to work nicely with QuickTime, moving all videos to the h.264 standard (so Apple could avoid that nasty Flash kid). Google even optimized their web apps for the iPhone, and Apple smiled.

And so they played in the new smartphone playground together and giggled at Yahoo and Microsoft and Adobe and everyone else. They were the coolest kids, they told everyone how happy they were, and everyone thought they were the perfect lovers.

The iPhone quickly became a huge success, positioning itself as the future of ubiquitous consumer-oriented computing. Just the kind that Google wants to control to deliver its highly targeted ads. Google noticed the success, and the relationship started to rupture. I can imagine the meeting between Eric, Sergey and Larry: “Whaaaa…? How did they…? Fuck, we need to get into this now.” It was then that Google started to reveal its true face — and their plans for the little company they bought in 2005, helmed by the phone wiz Andy Rubin. They realized that they couldn’t let Apple control the main window to the web. After all, it was their web, not Apple’s.

Google presented Android, their own smartphone operating system made to imitate Apple’s. Not only did they devote resources to create this, but they wanted to give it for free to every manufacturer and carrier. It didn’t take much for Steve Jobs to realize that the romance was over. It was betrayal. Google was his new Microsoft. The real nemesis that could build a new dominant “Windows”, and turn his early success with the iPhone into the new Mac underdog.

That was when all went to hell.

Escalating Conflict

It wasn’t an open war. At the beginning, it all happened behind curtains, like when Apple allegedly stopped multitouch on Android and Google complied, realizing that they might otherwise be stepping into a patent minefield. Like the one the just got into now, with HTC as the proxy.

Steve Jobs couldn’t tie his tongue, however. Back in January 2008, he was already criticizing Google and Android, pointing out that it wasn’t going to be good for anyone. It was the first knife shining in the open, but it wasn’t the last one.

After that, executives at Apple have been pretty clear about what they think about Google, like when Tim Cook said that Google was still trying to catch up with the first iPhone or Jobs gave his blunt-as-bricks opinion on Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra. “It’s bullshit,” he said, a sentiment now shared by many.

It almost feels like this is something personal for Steve Jobs, as if he believed that a fake-smiled Eric Schmidt sat at the Apple’s board, eating his food and drinking his wine, while plotting to kidnap Apple’s baby since the very beginning. It seems the feeling is mutual: Schmidt delivered his own snide against Jobs and his new baby recently, pooping on the iPad as nothing more than a big phone.

Knowing how things developed, it’s surprising that Schmidt stayed on Apple’s board for so long. He resigned on August 2009, just as the war started to go open, first with Google grabbing mobile advertising company AdMob from Apple’s hands (which forced Apple to buy Quattro Wireless). Then with Apple pissing on Google’s parade by stealing Lala, the music streaming service that Larry and Sergei wanted to have.

The love affair was definitely over, and the bitter separation started. Like gangrene, the hate started to spread to every aspect in the relations between the two companies. According to insiders, negotiating the terms for maps in the new iPhone OS and the iPad was a fierce battle, to the point in which Apple went and bought their own charting company at one point. Who knows if that move was part of their poker hand—like the rumors about Apple replacing Google search with Bing—or an actual desire to get fully independent from Google.

The War for the Future of Computing

The true war, however, has started today, with the lawsuit against HTC. It names their Windows phones, but that’s just a distracting maneuver. The core example in the lawsuit is Android, and that’s where the real attack is. And by going against HTC, the weakest link in the chain, Apple is not only attacking Google. It’s also giving a warning to every manufacturer out there: If you try to pull a Nexus Two for them, we will launch our missiles against you. Motorola—who confirmed they are working with Google—could be the next one in the list.

Jobs clearly knows that they are playing for the domination of the future of computing, the Next Big Thing. And he doesn’t want this one to end like the Macintosh-Windows War. This time he has a huge lead, and he has the deep pockets to fight for it, whether that means new product development, strategic acquisitions or all-out legal battles. In the most recent Apple shareholder meeting, he clearly said this: They will use their huge mountain of cash to do everything necessary, every “bold move” needed to keep their lead, and have the whole enchilada for themselves.

There’s no doubt that Jobs will use every single of Apple’s 40 billion dollars to trump Google’s plans, and keep their massive market share in the mobile device and applications world. But for that he will need a strong cloud structure and to get deep into the social aspect of the web. Of the latter, they got nothing. On the former, MobileMe is still a half-baked solution, and iWork.com beta has failed to gain any real traction. Maybe Apple’s traditional enemy—Microsoft—would be able to help there. And maybe getting together with Facebook would slap Google where it hurts more.

On the other side, Google has the lead in the cloud, except for their failed social efforts, which are the target of jokes and extreme criticism. At the same time, while technically good, Android has failed to match the momentum of the iPhone. Android’s app marketplace is still tiny compared to the App Store—and low quality too, by comparison. Apple has an easier time wooing app developers at this point, and that is a big advantage.

Overall, it seems like the two ex-lovers are in a technical tie, and are getting dirtier and bloodier by the day. Sometimes, love ends up like this.

Don’t you sometimes wish legal squabbles like this actually delivered on their promises? There’s pretty much no way that Toshiba’s patent claim with the US International Trade Commission will lead to a ban on Wistron imports — the company builds laptops for Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and others, and will likely settle in cash long before any rulings against it — but it’s fun to imagine the mayhem that would result if such an eventuality were to materialize. A quick look at the rankings of global computer vendors shows that Toshiba is mostly trying to throw a banana skin in front of its direct competitors, claiming as it does that Wistron products infringe on its methodologies for touchpad production and file saving when the laptop loses power. The ITC, should it decide to investigate, will take up to 15 months on this matter, so no breath-holding is advised just yet, though if that settlement does eventuate it should be a pretty breathtaking number.

Toshiba seeks to prevent Wistron laptop imports to the US originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of using your hands? Microsoft has reportedly applied for a patent that would allow you to operate devices hands-free, by flexing muscles in other parts of your body.

The technology is known as Electromyography (EMG), which translates electrical impulses from muscles to a computer, according to TechFlash. A Microsoft research video (above) shows a using strapping some sensors to their arm and then playing Guitar Hero via air guitar, or without an actual guitar hooked up to the console.

The technology could come as wearable gear for the arms, head, chest, or legs, TechFlash reports. Don’t add it to your wishlist just yet, though. Microsoft does not expect this to be on store shelves anytime soon.