Well, I seriously doubt a Microsoft astroturfing shill would expose insider trading before the acquisition, which would potentially result in MS/Nokia employees getting penalized.
I can assure you that I am just a fan(perhaps overzealous at times, like many on here) and not a shill. Don't know how to prove it to you though, if there was any proof that would convince you let me know, I will provide it. I never worked for or received anything from MS directly or indirectly ever. I don't even own their stock. I just like to play devil's advocate on HN. :/
That doesn't make any sense. Microsoft pays more for H.264 licenses than what it gets. Shipping VP8 with Windows will only open them to more patent lawsuits since Google doesn't indemnify VP8 users from patent suits.
Google will be the least affected by patent trolls with VP8, they only have to pay license fees on Nexus devices, Chromebooks, Motorola devices which are barely a handful compared to the number of Windows devices, iDevices and other Android devices.
>So I see no point for Nokia themselves to be such jerks as to attack open codecs
Except for one big reason, to monetize their patents.
>This already happened with attack on VP8 even without any acquisition. MS hand behind it was not even very hidden.
Nokia was really starving for money and wanted to monetize their patents, and saw VP8 as a threat. Instead of waiting for it to be popular and then pounce, they pre-emptively requested Google(which is rolling in dough) to license their patents. They did spend a lot on R&D in their heyday, they're not a garden variety patent troll. If a CEO didn't try to get their patents licensed while hurting badly for money, they would be called out for it.
I fail to see any MS hand in this, hidden or not. Do you have any references to back that up?
Nokia's board is the one that hired Elop away from Microsoft and was behind his every major decision. So I think the plans were set in motion at Nokia before Elop was even hired.
Read up this guy's profile, do you really think he would approve hiring Elop just like that without such an eventuality in sight?
According to Bloomberg TV, Elop is returning to Microsoft, and Siilasmaa will serve as Nokia's interim CEO.
My guess is that Elop will become MS CEO, and is not a bad choice. In his interviews, he comes across as someone really smart and eloquent. He is one of the few CEOs in the world with both enterprise and consumer experience that a future MS CEO badly needs.
I guess Microsoft's main concern is opening up another vector for patent lawsuits by shipping hundreds of millions of VP8 decoders. Google doesn't indemnify against VP8 infringements so why would Microsoft pick up the tab when they're already paying for H264?(Which they got sued over by Googorola btw).
>As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski wrote on Friday: “Here’s one metric by which Ballmer will be judged harshly. On the last day of 1999, the day before he took over as CEO, Microsoft’s market capitalization was $600 billion
That fails to take into account, the crazy dotcom valuation days and the subsequent big crash in 2000. Not to say that Ballmer did great as a CEO but that's just poor reporting. Microsoft did have its great growth days, like Apple recently did before petering out, but it was back in the 80s.
They couldn't include the ads because the YouTube API did not give them access to show ads. They did, however, include a download video option, on purpose which ironically made Windows Phone the best platform for a good YouTube app for a while.
Just Nokia alone sold 20 million Windows Phones the past few quarters. Google's stated reason for no app sounds hollow when even Vimeo has an app. They do have the right to do whatever they want though, but claiming to be open and not evil requires a higher bar.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6318733
I can assure you that I am just a fan(perhaps overzealous at times, like many on here) and not a shill. Don't know how to prove it to you though, if there was any proof that would convince you let me know, I will provide it. I never worked for or received anything from MS directly or indirectly ever. I don't even own their stock. I just like to play devil's advocate on HN. :/