Summary: Litigation by proxy still a hot trend, where Microsoft is the supplier and parasites like Vringo are the executioners

WELL, we sure saw it coming. We have followed Vringo for years, especially after Microsoft/Nokia passed it some ammunition that hits Google where it hurts. Microsoft even paid Vringo.

We are by no means going to defend Google Search, which is horrible surveillance (so-called 'replacements' like Duck Duck Go are even worse in some ways), but the point worth making here is that Microsoft and its proxies continue to hassle Google. Here is Joe Mullin's report [1] on the latest development. It's a shame that Microsoft's role is hardly emphasised. Our Wiki has a more complete chronology of it. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

   Vringo is a tiny company that purchased some patents from Lycos, an old search engine, in 2011 and then used those patents to sue Google. In December 2012, Vringo won $30 million in a jury trial, but that was far less than the hundreds of millions it was seeking.
   
   Today, Vringo got the payout it was looking for: a 1.36 percent running royalty on US-based revenue from AdWords, Google's flagship program. US District Judge Raymond Jackson had already ruled last week (PDF) that the AdWords program, which was tweaked by Google after the Vringo verdict, wasn't "colorably different" from the old infringing program. He gave Google and Vringo one last session to hammer out a royalty rate, and when they couldn't, he went ahead and set it (PDF)—at almost exactly the rate Vringo was seeking.