Google Is a Curious Outfit: Who, How, Why, Where, Buy, and Build?
July 16, 2019
Ah, the familiar Silicon Valley question: Buy or build?
Reuters, a “real news” outfit, published “Google Accused of Ripping Off Digital Ad Technology in U.S. Lawsuit.” DarkCyber has no idea if the alleged lawsuit is valid or if Google “ripped off” a company called Impact Engine.
According to the “real news” story:
Impact Engine Inc filed the complaint in federal court in San Diego, California, alleging various Google online advertising platforms, including Google Ads and Google AdSense, infringed on six patents.
DarkCyber believes that Impact Engine is convinced that Googlers took technology developed by the smaller firm. Google’s present senior management is probably unaware of the actions of young at heart Googlers.
Based on DarkCyber’s experience interacting with large, successful corporations, Google-type outfits ask a lot of questions. But these are predictable and probably should not be answered without prior thought. Scripting answers is a reasonable way to prepare for a lunch with a predator.
Now what about the basic questions. Here are a few I have experienced:
- Who are you?
- Who developed the innovation?
- Why was it developed?
- Why is it better than existing innovations?
- When did you develop the innovation?
- Did you patent the innovation and receive a patent?
- Where can this innovation be implemented?
- How much of a revenue boost does the innovation represent?
- How much did you spend in cash to create the innovation?
- How long did it take to create the innovation?
- How many people worked on the innovation in [a] its preliminary phase, [b] its testing phase, and [c] its commercialization phase?
- What is the programming language used?
- Does the innovation run from the cloud or on premises?
- What are the next series of enhancements you plan to add to your innovation?
- How long will those take?
- How much money do you need to implement the enhancements in half your time estimate?
- Who are your competitors?
- What are the gotchas in your innovation?
- Who is your nightmare competitor?
- What do you worry about relative to this innovation when you go to bed at night?
- If you had a magic wand, what changes would you make in the innovation as it exists at this time?
- Would you rough out a block diagram of the major components of the innovation?
- Would you walk us through your basic slide deck?
There are other questions, of course.
Now a company talking with a Google-type firm is likely to be darned excited to be in proximity to a deep pocket power center. Consequently the visitors are probably going to say too much, be too specific, and reveal more than the visiting team thought was possible.
Yep, well, there’s the fact that power and potential money loosens lips.
What happens when the small outfit leaves with booth leftovers in hand, a reasonable vegan lunch, and worshipful praise from the big company’s “team players”?
Let me boil down the gist of the debriefs in which I have participated:
- Is this innovation any good?
- Can we duplicate it quickly and easily? (Build?)
- If not, how much do you think the innovation is worth?
- Can we just license the innovation? (Semi-buy?)
- Should we forget this outfit and go to the competitors named in the meeting?
- Don’t we already have this functionality?
- Does anybody remember meeting with this company or anyone who works there before?
- Should we buy this outfit?
There are other considerations, of course.
In short, when big Google type outfits meet with small innovative outfits, the expectations of the small company are likely to be different from those at the big company.
Therefore, the legal dust up. Worth monitoring this particular action. But the matter of patents, prior art, and the patents which the big company may have tucked in their cloud storage device are likely to have some bearing on the matter.
One thing is certain: The lawyers involved will get paid a lot of money. And the money people? Sure. Money people.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2019
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