More patent garbage, apologies ahead of time.

Remember the epic rant from Google yesterday, having to do with the patent situation in the tech world and how everyone is in bed with one another which is creating a hostile environment?   Their chief legal office even going as far as calling out some companies specifically like Microsoft, Apple and Oracle?   While we all got fired up and excited, agreeing with every single point that was made, it turns out that maybe the “Publish” button shouldn’t have been pressed just yet.  (Update:  Or should it have been?  Google has fired back with some pretty strong comments. We have added them just after the Microsoft part.)    

David Drummond the Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Google, just released a pretty epic statement.  If you ever wanted to know their feelings on the ridiculous patent situation that Apple, Microsoft and Oracle have brought forth towards Android, then you’ll want to read this.  Some incredibly strong words that I couldn’t agree with more.  

I’ll just start this off by quoting Eric Schmidt again, since the state of the tech world couldn’t have been described any better:

“We have seen an explosion of Android devices entering the market and, because of our successes, competitors are responding with lawsuits as they cannot respond through innovations.”

To follow that up, we wanted to point out that the Justice Department is ramping up its probe over the purchase of Nortel’s some 6,000 patents by Rockstar Bidco (Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Ericsson, Sony, and EMC) and whether or not this group acquired them to simply attack Android smartphones.  If we take a look at that group, it would certainly appear as if they had no other reason, but we’ll leave that to the government to decide.

Back in April, the Justice Department stepped in to thwart another consortium of companies (Apple, Oracle and Microsoft) from using their recently acquired patent portfolio to unfairly hurt rivals.  All we can hope for is a similar outcome, so that we can get on with our smartphone infested lives.

All I really know though, is that I’m sick of seeing a new lawsuit filed each day by Apple against another company.

Via:  WSJ

Cheers jeesung!

So much for those rumors last week that Google would be buying up the calling giant, I’d say.  Microsoft announced this morning that their acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion has become official.  It’s looking like they plan to incorporate Skype’s service into a number of their products, but all we care about is Android, right?  Well, the press release specifically mentions that they “will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms” so no need to worry yet kiddies.

Full presser below.  

My hatred of touch screen controls is well-known to my editor here at Droid Life. Most of the time Kellex isn’t a fan of posting my more vitriolic reviews because games that do touch controls badly are simply bad apps. They fail in their most basic function: to make the game easily playable with minimal frustration.

Every once and awhile, however, I find something that changes my mind: PewPew is one of those games. It takes the winning formula of the Geometry Wars series and mercilessly rips it off; I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. However, it replicated the dual joystick experience of an Xbox 360 controller quite well through two amazing responsive on-screen control knobs. In short, one control stick moves you, the other tells the game which direction you want to shoot. Sometimes the game is a “rub your stomach while pat your head” conundrum; keeping track of the two is harder than it looks.