I don't really want to defend either company, and I feel filthy for writing this post.
Apple is the best at aesthetic design, and customer satisfaction. But the only truly innovative thing Apple has done is the iPhone. The iPhone does deserve to be considered a great innovation, but the rest of the article's claims to innovation don't really stand up. Every silicon valley company builds on the work of others, and Apple is no exception. Ahem, Xerox.
Google makes the vast majority of revenue and profits the old fashioned way search engine advertising. Attempts to diversify the companys revenue and profits have largely failed.
This is sort of true, although I would give Google more credit in its search engine business model than the author. Until Google came along, no one had really figured out how to make money on internet search, even Yahoo. They did it, and are still rolling in money because of it.
I would also rank Google Maps highly, that has affected people's lives as much as the author is solely reserving for Apple products.
Take the famed and fabled self-driving car that Google trots out from time to time. Can you buy one? Nope. Does Google sell the technology? Nope. Self driving vehicles may make great TV news and PR, and they may be the norm at some point in the distant future, but for now, its all Google vaporware.
True, but I kind of like that the current internet billionaires are spending money on trying to build the next big thing, rather than sports cars and big houses.
The money thrown around by Google may not pay off for Google, but they are driving innovation that will pay off someday somewhere. I think the world and the economy will be better off with self driving cars than from iTunes.
That is not an indicator of "innovation", or real strength. That would be an indicator of "ME TOO", and indicate a patent of LOW VALUE, with low probability of licensing revenues.
Apple has a lot of innovative patents and patents they DO NOT LICENSE. . . and patents that are not licensed do not get cited in other patents. Ergo, they are not going to have a high-citation rate. Microsoft, in 2005 embarked on patenting lots of CODE. . . not hardware, or technical development. Every piece of code their coders came up with was immediately sent to legal, cited out the kazoo with previous work by Microsoft, and then sent off with a patent application. The next revision of that same code, same thing. . . and so on. That flurry of software and algorithm patents out of Microsoft is what is being shown on that chart.
In 2010, or so, when the lawsuits against Android started climbing, Google had a very small patent portfolio and started aggressively buying patents to build a patent warchest. The bought Motorola not for it's cellular phone division, which they dumped in less than two years, but for it's more than 16,000 patents to be able to use them in the more than 50 patent infringement lawsuits that had been brought against it by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and a host of other companies for theft of Intellectual property which they had stuffed into Android without bothering to license it. So far, those purchases of patents have not done them much good in those cases. . . and the old patents in there, although some are "high quality," according to Amberscore, they are too old to be much use. . . because they are FRAND encumbered patents.
"Google must have understood how weak its own position was. When Jobs announced the iPhone, Google had earned only 38 patents since its founding. Thirty-eight! To equal Apples phone, Google rushed to release Android, relatively old software that Google had acquired. It is open source, and was poorly defended with intellectual property.""Googles Growing Patent Stockpile" By Antonio Regalado on November 29, 2013, Technology Review
At the time when Google had just 38 patents in its portfolio, Apple had thousands, but only about 450 of those applied to mobile communications. . . . but many of them applied to handheld computers and PDAs having pioneered the PDA market with the Newton back in the late 1980-1997, plus more thousands on small computers, and computer GUIs and computer interfaces. Apple also had licenses for a lot more from almost every other company that Google had not bothered to get.
Just yesterday, Apple was granted 29 new patents in various technical areas and the day before over 40. . . including one for a liquid metal screw that doesn't require machining after casting. Last month they were granted patents on new types of 18K gold alloys that were twice as strong and up to 60% lighter than normal 18K gold alloys.
According to Business insider, In 2014:
The patent wars may or may not be beneficial to the companies. . . or to our economy. The problem is the patent trolls who are not productive with the patents that have amassed not by invention or inheritance, but by purchase or assignment, and use obscure minor overly broad claims that are not at all germane to the patent which are included in them to extort money from people who are actually doing something with other patents that are valid but can be challenged using the claims of the older patent's claims.