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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Another example of business cluelessness, they're not flexing their patent muscles.

It's worth noting that Google's prospectus [1] as filed with the SEC says that Google will always pursue long-term opportunities even if they hurt Google in the short term. Patents are an example here; Google could sue all of its "competitors" out of existence today, but would that really benefit Google in the long term? Would you work at Google if they were the company that put every tech startup out of business with "method for computing the sum of two integer" patents? Probably not. So aggressive patent lawsuits are not what Google's shareholders want. And doing what the shareholders want is not exactly "business cluelessness" :)

[1] http://www.buec.udel.edu/pollacks/Acct351/handouts/SEC%20For...

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Remember Communicating with Care?

You might want to go review that. Or just stop posting so much about Google altogether.

So you're saying it's careless to respond to comments on the Internet?

I'm saying that speculating about what Google can and cannot do to competitors in public is definitely not Communicating with Care, and that your comment history is littered with borderline cases like this one. Just stop.

Further, you don't actually need to respond to every stupid, incorrect statement on the Internet that's written about your new employer. Really.

I see where you're coming from. Why do you have to use a misspelled throwaway account to say this, though?

(Ultimately, I see the risk in saying "I think XXX" if Google decides to someday do the opposite of XXX. But there is some limit; I'm still going to say that writing unit tests is good even if Google's official message to investors becomes "testing is a waste of time". That's because I'm me, and I have my own opinions. If Google wants to make an official statement, they have a blog for that. If someone wants to misconstrue a personal opinion of mine as an official statement, well... let's just say that their Pulitzer hopes may be dashed...)

If they're borderline report him and let whomever take care of it. Best case scenario here is that you're not only a hypocrite but one who feels the need to say things he considers so bombastic it requires hiding behind a throwaway account.

By the way, his email address is in his profile. If you were really that concerned about "communicating with care" you could be a professional about it and mention it privately to him. Of course, that wouldn't satisfy your need to respond to every stupid, incorrect statement he makes about his new employer, really.

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