Apple paid $2.6bn of $4.5bn Nortel patent grab Apple has revealed that it paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.6bn for its share of the recent Nortel patent-acquisition deal. "On June 27, 2011, the Company, as part of a consortium, participated in the acquisition of Nortel's patent portfolio for an overall purchase price of $4.5 billion, of which the Company's …
""The bidding process, as reported by Reuters, was at times surreal, with Google making bids based upon such mathematical concepts as Brun's constant, the Meissel-Mertens constant, and even pi – one Google bid was, yes, $3.14159bn."
I hope Apple & co sue the arse off them - Google need to grow-up
Sue them for what? Not using round numbers? That would be new depths of low even for Apple's legal department!
You've clearly never been in a bidding war before. Using odd numbers or "a little bit more" is extremely common. Our house buying system in Scotland is based on the "Offers Over" scheme. When bidding you pretty much make up your mind about what you want to pay, say £230k then "add a little on" just in case someone else bids £230k. Of course everyone does this, so you try and think of *something* original such that someone's £230,001.00 bid doesn't gazump your bit of £230,000.01... e.g. £230,012.34 or similar.
So this is quite standard practice.
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