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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the article refers to this as "shenanigans that didn't work". The problem wasn't that they bid pi billion dollars. The problem was that they didn't have enough money to buy the patents.

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They certainly had the money, they just didn't bid enough money.

Was that the problem? My understanding was that they could see the other bids, but chose not to bid higher.

Google has 36 billion dollars of cash on hand, so they had the money, they apparently weren't willing to bid more than pi billion though.

A minor point, but they certainly do not have $36B cash on hand, they have it in assets that can be liquidated reasonably quickly, but companies do not keep $36B lying around, or in the bank. It is stashed in short term investments.

"Cash – As of December 31, 2010, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $35.0 billion."

http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q4_google_earnings....

what investors refer to as 'cash on hand' doesn't literally mean a room full of bills or a bank account. a 'cash asset' is anything that can be theoretically converted back into cash quickly and with little trouble (tbills, term deposits, bank accounts, any AAA+ funds, etc.)

for eg. if the Greek government owed me $1B, I wouldn't call that cash on hand, but if the US government owed me $1B, it is

Not just any short-term investments: I think they have to be with investment banks, or invested in certain highly liquid, highly rated vehicles such as money market accounts, treasury bills, or short-term AAA-rated government debt.

According to the article, they bid up through $4 billion but eventually "tapped out".

If I read correctly, they actually bid up to 4 billion before dropping out.

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