TMFTL. A truly 21st century piece from the Washington Post:

It’s not often that search giant Google looks like the little guy. But in a move unprecedented in the tech world, six of Google’s rivals — including Apple, Microsoft and Research in Motion — combined forces recently to prevent the company from buying a critical trove of patents.

Federal antitrust enforcers are scrutinizing whether Google, often accused of abusing its Web search power, is facing an unfair coalition of companies that could block its popular Android mobile phone software, according to a source close to the matter.

[...]

The latest tussle over patents began when the Canadian telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks declared bankruptcy and put up for sale its portfolio of about 6,000 patents covering an array of wireless and Internet technologies. Nortel described the portfolio as touching “nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.”

[...]

Then an unknown group calling itself Rockstar Bidco stepped forward with a whopping $4.5 billion offer — turning the Nortel sale into possibly the biggest intellectual-property auction of all time. The group, it turned out, was a coalition of Google’s biggest rivals in mobile phones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/antitrust-officials-probi...