They are monetizing a competitors product and using it to finance their own product. That's strategic genius.

That you consider the act of patent extortion to be 'genious' says a lot about you, it's a simple form of a shakedown which has been around for ages.

In reality it's nothing genious it at all, it's just a matter of being willing to stoop so low as to use the insanity that is todays software patents to try and attack your competition.

Of course Microsoft is on the forefront of such behaviour, as it's seemingly part of their DNA.

And while Google can put up a defence, that is not something the vast majority of tech companies can, which means that the huge tech companies who amassed these ludicrous 'patents' (and obviously had a huge hand in having software patents made legal to begin with) are now using it to try and destroy competitors that they would otherwise have to compete with in an open market.

Even going so far as to purchasing a bunch of third-party patents all in an effort to attack a competitor with which they can't compete by the value of their own products, -'if we can't create products consumers want, we must instead try to remove the other products!'.

The end result is a very bleak world for developers and entrepreneurs, but even more so for consumers, as when there is no competition to speak of, you are effectively locked to a platform because there are no viable alternatives, with technology stagnation and high prices as the result.

This is what software patents ultimately brings us, a future where the entire software market is controlled by few large tech entities who owns and continously file new broad patents to encompass any possible functionality with which they can easily crush any smaller company through threat of long costly legal battles.

And even if a small company would end up winning, 'there's always another broad software patent to litigate with'.

Again as a developer I can't understand how people who claim they are developers can stand behind this behaviour.