Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch: Let's Sue the Internet

So Apple is suing HFC, the premier manufacturer of Android-based phones, including Google's Nexus One. And Rupert Murdoch is suing Google--or so he says.

It's the suing phase, when the tough guys lose their cool.

We've been here before.

At the peak of its creative powers, Apple sued Microsoft, claiming that Windows was a Mac rip-off, which it was. The suit became Apple's raison d'etre, tied up the company's psychic energy and hopes and dreams for years, and sorely inhibited its creative powers. And then it lost.

It's a Steve thing. Not just a temper tantrum. But an operatic one. It's Steve Jobs' signature: pride and paranoia. Behind it, too, is the motivation of all great competitors--they really don't want to compete, they want the market for themselves. Now it's Google, rather than Microsoft, copying him. It's Google's phone he's out to get. He's pissed off: Google controls the Internet and all he controls is his rotten phone.

A lawsuit is, quite literally, a form of protectionism--of wanting the law to give you an advantage that the market isn't giving you. So, curiously, I would read Apple's gambit as a sign of frustration with the iPhone. In spite of the sense we all have that it's taken over the world, Apple's margins are apparently not large enough to sustain a competitive onslaught. If they were, Apple would not have bothered suing, which has its own huge costs--in resources, image, time, and in the doubts it sows among investors.

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