Tag Archives: goog

‘Flappy Bird’ shows Nintendo’s missed phone games opportunity

The curious case of “Flappy Bird,” a successful yet controversial smartphone game, shows a missed opportunity for Nintendo in mobile games. The Vietnamese developer of “Flappy Bird” pulled the game from the Apple (AAPL) App Store and Google (GOOG) Play store over the weekend, despite its apparent smash success. Developer Dong Nguyen announced on Saturday that he was yanking the game, apparently fed up with the intense criticism about it. “Flappy Bird” was knocked for being frustratingly hard to play and for looking like it copied the design of Nintendo ‘s (NTDOY)popular side-scrolling “Mario Bros.” games. Nguyen claims legal issues did not factor into his decision to withdraw the game. However, two friends of his told Reuters that Nintendo had sent him a warning letter about the game. But the Wall Street Journal says Nintendo has denied that it had complained to Nguyen. Nguyen told the Verge that his free-to-play…

Congress Seeks To Tackle Patent Trolls In New Fix

Two years after passing the biggest patent change in decades, Congress is grappling with the issue again. Lawmakers are pondering bills designed to combat frivolous lawsuits by patent trolls, which describes those who buy patents and sue to enforce them but don’t use the control to make anything. Some critics say proposed legislation could unfairly benefit technology companies. Giants such as Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and

Google Reaches European Antitrust Deal, Avoids Fine

Google (GOOG) ended a three-year antitrust probe by the European Union on Wednesday by agreeing to give the links of rival Internet players more prominence in search results on its website. The search giant also will avoid paying a fine and will not be found guilty of wrongdoing under the deal. Such a fine could have cost Google up to $5 billion. Google must abide by the terms of the agreement for the next five years. But Google still faces