We've talked many times about how patents are often used as weapons to kill innovative startups that threaten legacy players. Ryan alerts us to a perfect example of this in practice. 1-800-CONTACTS, the giant online contact lens/glasses space, is trying to kill off an upstart innovative competitor called Ditto. And, no, this is not a case of Ditto copying something that 1-800-CONTACTS invented. The details are astounding. First of all, Ditto's main innovation is doing something that 1-800-CONTACTS does not do (though it has since announced plans to introduce something similar), which is to let buyers of glasses take a quick webcam video of their face, and then be able to see what they would look like in various pairs of glasses. That's pretty cool. The 15 person startup got some funding for this... and then promptly got sued by the bigger company. And 1-800-CONTACTS' actions in this case show that it set out, deliberately, to kill off this innovative startup:

It appears that 1-800-CONTACTS' CEO went onto Ditto's website the very day it launched, presumably to investigate the upstart competitor's new technology. Having seen Ditto's product, 1-800-CONTACTS then went out and purchased a patent from a defunct company that claims to cover selling eyeglasses over a network using a 3D model of a user's face.

But here's the thing: 1-800-CONTACTS does not appear at all interested in licensing the patent to Ditto. Rather, it seems determined to put Ditto out of business. Period. So it's suing Ditto in federal court in Utah, hundreds of miles from Ditto's headquarters in California.

Yes, you read that right. First, the CEO went and saw the site, then sought out and bought a patent that could be used against the company (in this case, US Patent 7,016,824), then brought suit in a very inconvenient jurisdiction and, finally, isn't even entertaining the idea of licensing the patent. And, of course, the patent itself seems highly dubious in quality. Ditto thinks it would win the lawsuit, but spending what little money it has on litigation will almost certainly kill the company anyway. Even if it wins, it will likely lose by using up its money not on innovating, not on delivering a great service to people who want it, but on fighting a bully.

The EFF is asking for help in finding prior art for this patent, via StackExchange's prior art section, in the hopes that the patent can be invalidated quickly. In the meantime, though, shame on 1-800-CONTACTS for being an anti-innovation legal bully. Of course, this isn't the first time we've written about 1-800-CONTACTS doing dubious things against competitors. In the past, it's sued competitors for keyword ads, despite having lost similar cases and despite buying keywords on competitors itself. It seems that the company is willing to use the legal system to crack down on competition whenever it can, which makes it seem like a company worth avoiding when looking for any kind of corrective lens solutions.

"Justice prevails" is often declared when a court case ends, honoring a system that produces the right result. Right, however, is not always just. The judicial system needs to address the exorbitant costs that accompany litigation, or a situation can happen when a company is sued by a deeper pocket plaintiff, wins the case, but has to shut down because the cost of litigation has exhausted its financial capital.

Last month, in a unanimous decision, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, once again, a judgment in favor of Veoh Networks in a widely followed copyright case brought six years ago by Universal Music Group. Veoh, the court held, was entitled to rely on the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and was not liable for copyright infringement for user-uploaded videos that Universal alleged contained their copyrights, an important precedent that benefits YouTube and others. Veoh, the company I joined during the early stages of the digital video revolution in 2006, which pioneered long form viewing on user generated content sites, and was the first site to offer premium content from major networks like ABC and CBS, is not around anymore to capitalize on its victory. Three years ago, a few months after Veoh's win at the district court, its leadership surveyed the war torn company, wounded from a litigation battle designed to inflict the very damage the lawsuit had wrought, wondered, at what price victory and decided to sell the assets and closed the doors. Universal Music lost the case, but achieved victory, shutting down an innovative company that threatened their static business model.

From the outset of the case, Universal Music Group made sure Veoh would suffer financially. They issued many discovery requests, doing their best to make sure Veoh spent money to defend itself. Savvy plaintiffs know how to exert pressure by exploiting our judicial system's liberal rules regarding discovery. In this regard, advances in technology have not produced economic efficiencies. Millions of documents and casual conversations are stored on computers, readily accessible. These petabytes of data need to be prepared and reviewed by lawyers before being produced in response to a discovery request. The lawyers' bill increases very rapidly when an army of attorneys is reviewing all this data. Because the bulk of documents and discovery often lie with the defendant, plaintiffs can inflict maximum financial pain on a defendant, while producing relatively few documents themselves. This tilted playing field gives plaintiffs an unfair advantage. In the Veoh case, legal fees on discovery alone were enormous, exacerbated by the magistrate's decisions to compel the company at its own cost to store every single video on our system, and to even produce Skype conversations. Who suffers? The defendant. Recourse? None.

The company quickly recognized the economics of litigation and the lack of upside to being a defendant and offered to settle. However, Veoh never had meaningful settlement discussions; Veoh did not have the cash to pay the amount Universal was seeking. The company was left with no choice but to litigate, and spend money.

To counter the ticking clock and register, Veoh hoped for a quick resolution to lift the dark cloud Universal had placed on the company that handcuffed it from raising the additional funds the company needed to grow. The case, however, was not resolved in the district court for over two years and is now approaching the six-year anniversary.

Defendants need an option other than to just play defense and wait. It was well documented in the case that Universal never even sent Veoh any takedown notice for their content and was similarly undisputed that every time Veoh received a takedown notice from every other content owner, that Veoh took the content down. Universal could have achieved its goal of having its alleged content removed from Veoh's website by merely sending the company a letter. Our judicial system gave Universal the right to sue. Shouldn't Veoh have any rights or recourse, especially when a mere letter could have avoided an entire litigation?

Unfortunately, the only option available to Veoh was to file a motion to recover fees after it won the case, even though this avenue was too little too late; the mortal damage was already inflicted. Six years of combative litigation cannot be undone entirely by recovering legal fees. Yet, the standard for recovering fees is very high and Veoh was not successful. Despite its favorable decision on the merits of the case, the Ninth Circuit denied awarding Veoh its fees, instead remanding to the District Court to consider awarding Veoh its much lower court costs. The Ninth Circuit's ruling on this point only further weakens an already poor option for innocent companies.

Our judicial system needs a solution to rectify the devastation that unfounded litigation causes companies ultimately proven innocent. Courts need to be sensitive to the new entrant and pay respect to the scales of justice when a deep pocket plaintiff goes after a financially weaker opponent. Instituting "loser pays" into the concept of commercial litigation in appropriate situations improves the chances for defendants, and could reduce meritless litigation. While this concept has been debated for decades, another standard needs to be introduced, one that holds plaintiffs and their lawyers equally accountable. Plaintiffs' lawyers should be compelled to pay any 'loser pays' fee along with their clients. In a world where plaintiffs' lawyers share in multi-billion dollar settlements, it seems only fair that if they lose a case they should pay. This will force lawyers to think twice about the merits of their clients' case, as opposed to what strong-armed litigation tactic they can use to extract a settlement. If lawyers are held accountable for their - and their client's - actions in a manner never before applied, we will see what everyone wants: a precipitous drop in the number of cases in our judicial system. We can even adopt a three strikes policy and ban law firms and their clients for twelve months if they are found guilty of such abusive behavior on more than two occasions. How refreshing that would be.

Fewer litigations will reduce the dockets of federal and state courts, reducing the need for our government to increase the number of judges and court staff, thereby saving taxpayers' money. Plaintiffs will pay more attention to increasing defendant's legal fees lest they lose. Legal fees and costs will decline, which will lead to a downward pressure on insurance premiums. Most importantly, productivity will increase. Companies will spend previously allocated monies to litigation on research, development, hiring, and expansion of operations.

Veoh encountered a plaintiff set on its destruction. They were unable to defeat Veoh in the world of technology or in the world of business. With those avenues closed, Universal sued. The judicial system provided Universal with what it could not achieve on a level business playing field. Veoh won the case but is not around to continue to grow. That is wrong. UMG and its lawyers should be required to pay for the damage they have done. Strike one to a plaintiff and its lawyers. Fairness in our judicial systems dictates such an outcome.

Joshua Metzger is an Internet consultant. He was SVP Corporate Development & General Counsel for Veoh Network and before that was chief legal officer for Overture Services, which was acquired by Yahoo!.

In the wake of the Great Recession, many young adults are still having a hard time finding jobs. The recent unemployment rates for young adults (age 20 to 24) is about 13%, which is much higher than the rest of the adult population. Even worse, it seems like young workers (even college graduates) are increasingly taking low-wage jobs. Perhaps it's time for our youth to consider taking a chance and going into business for themselves. Here are a few links that might help convince them to take the plunge.

• Upstart, founded by a team of ex-Googlers, is an all-in-one loan agency, investment fund, mentoring network, and dream factory for up-and-comers in their early 20s. To find the most promising candidates, applicants are screened using sophisticated algorithms that can predict their likely future income based on GPA, educational background, past job offers, etc. Upstart helps them raise enough money to get their startups going, and in return, they pay their backers up to 7% of their future income each year for 10 years. [url]
• Check out these class notes from Peter Thiel's course on startups at Stanford, written in essay form. In 2010, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel created the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $100,000 to 20 students under 20 years old, with the goal of encouraging them to create their own startups instead of going to college. [url]
• Read the Upstart blog for founder Dave Girouard's account of how he came up with the idea for Upstart. The blog also has other personal accounts, information about Upstart, and interesting articles and perspectives on entrepreneurship. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Most people used to think that patent trolls tended to focus on bigger companies -- those with huge bank accounts who'd rather pay the troll off than deal with a lawsuit. But over the last few years, we've been hearing more and more stories about startups hit by patent trolls, who are taking advantage of the fact that a patent lawsuit -- win or lose -- would almost certainly kill the company. One common tactic? Wait until a startup announces a round of fundraising and then pounce -- knowing that the company (a) has some money and (b) has little time to deal with a lawsuit. Finally, this issue is getting some attention. Crain's recently had a piece on patent trolls going "downmarket" after startups, which has some quotes from startup execs (many who want to remain anonymous to avoid further attacks). One of whom is actually fighting the troll:

"I have more lawyers than I have employees," said the entrepreneur, who asked to remain anonymous for fear he would be the target of even more lawsuits.

That entrepreneur noted that he's stopped paying himself a salary, and his legal bills ($50,000 per month) were rivaling his overall payroll of $63,000 per month. But he's fighting the troll on principle.

But, of course, even if he wins, he's not going to get that money back:

Young companies that are looking for venture capital are most likely to settle, so goes the conventional wisdom, because they have limited cash and worry that a lawsuit will scare off investors. It's cheap to bring a lawsuit, but expensive—$2.5 million on average—to defend against one. Not surprisingly, the majority of patent suits are settled out of court.

"The system is so stacked against me," said the e-commerce entrepreneur. "To prove I'm right, it will cost me more money than I have raised in my company's existence. If I win, I don't get the money back, and if I lose, I owe triple damages."

This is part of the reason why the SHIELD Act would be a useful step. While there are still many, many problems with patent trolling, at least it would make it possible to go after trolls for legal fees when the trolls lose.

Even though I was never a big Google Reader user, its death has got me thinking about online services quite a bit lately -- and really reminded me that we've done the cloud wrong. Rather than build true cloud computing, we've built a bunch of lockboxes.

The cloud was supposed to free us, not lock us in

"Cloud computing" went by a variety of other terms in the past before this marketing term stuck, but the key part of it was that it was supposed to free us of worrying about the location of our data. Rather than having to have things stored locally, the data could be anywhere, and we could access it via any machine or device. That sort of happened, and there definitely are benefits to data being stored in the cloud, rather than locally. But... what came with today's "cloud" was a totally different kind of lock: a lock to the service.

I can point many apps to data stored locally

I wrote something related to this a few years ago, concerning music in the cloud. If I have a bunch of MP3s stored locally, I can point any number of music apps at my music folder, and they can all play that music. As long as the data is not in a proprietary format, I can find the app that works best for me and the data is separate from the app. Even when you have proprietary formats like Microsoft's .doc, other apps can often make use of them as well -- so, for example, I can get by with Libre Office, and I don't lose access to all of my old Microsoft Word docs.

This is really useful, because it helps us avoid vendor lock-in in many cases. Even when, say, Microsoft or Apple dominates the market. It's still possible to come in and be compatible. The competition then focuses on building better services, rather than reinventing the data model. That's much more useful to consumers, because the innovation is focused on making their lives better, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Today's cloud brings us back to walled gardens

For the most part, today, however, "cloud" applications bundle the storage and the service as one, and the two are linked inseparably. You check your data into a new cloud service, but the application layer and the data are both held by the same company. Yes, you can often transfer data from one service to the other -- such as Google's "data liberation front" effort, which is fantastic (and goes beyond many other companies' efforts), but just the fact that data needs to be liberated suggests we're taking the wrong approach altogether. Rather than having to "export" all of your feeds from Google Reader and then waiting patiently for 50,000 other people who are trying to upload them to the few small Reader competitors out there, why shouldn't we have each had an OPML file stored somewhere that we control, and that we could easily point any reader application, whether its local or "in the cloud." And, yes, there are some services that attempt to do this, but it's not where the whole "cloud" space has gone.

Separate and liberate the data from the infrastructure

What the cloud should be about is both freeing us from being locked to local data, and also freeing us from having that data locked to a particular service. I should be able to keep my data in one spot and then access it via a variety of cloud clients -- and the clients and the data shouldn't necessarily be directly connected or held by the same party. If I don't want to listen to my music via one app, I can just connect a different app to my personal data cloud and off we go. If Google Reader shuts down, no problem, just point a different app at my RSS data. No extraction, no uploading. Just go.

There are, of course, plenty of players around which sort of do this. DropBox, Box, Amazon's S3 and even Google Drive are setting themselves up as personal data clouds, and there are a growing number of apps that run across them. Projects like the Locker Project are thinking about how we store personal data separated from apps as well. And I know there are a bunch of other projects either around today or quickly approaching release, that also seek to do something in this space.

But, for the most part, all of the stories that people talk about concerning "cloud" computing almost always involve services that tie together the app and the data and all you're really doing is trading the former limitations of local data for the limitations of a single service provider controlling your data. Many service providers want this, of course. It's a form of lock-in. Plus, having some sort of access to your data and your usage can enable them to do other things, such as more accurately data mine you and your usage.

But, as users, we really should be pushing more towards embracing the apps that separate the app from the data and that let you point their "cloud" app at any particular place you store your "cloud" data. Some of this may involve standardizing certain data formats, but that makes sense anyway, as, once again, that's an area where there are tremendous benefits to not reinventing the wheel, so that the innovation and competition can focus on the service level. While some vendors may fear losing lock-in, if they truly believe in their own ability to provide great services, it shouldn't be a problem. At the same time, they should also realize that embracing this kind of world means that it's easier for others to jump in and test their services as well.

The death of Google Reader raised a lot of issues around trust, and while you could "export" the data, that process is still messy and archaic when you think about it. The future of cloud computing should be much more focused on separating the data from the service. That would remove the fear that many are now talking about concerning adopting new cloud services that might not last very long. If the data is stored elsewhere, and entirely in the control of the user, then you don't need to trust the service provider nearly as much, but can dip in and test out different apps operating on the same data, and switch with ease.

If we're going to see the real promise of "the cloud" take place, that's where things need to head. We should be increasingly skeptical of "cloud" apps that also control the data.

There's nothing like a bit of disruptive innovation to make the legacy players start busting out the old moral panics. We've written a few times about the new generation of ride-for-hire and ride-share services, which are really disrupting the old taxi and limo business -- leading to all sorts of highly questionable lawsuits and attempts at regulating these new players into oblivion. In almost every case, it seems quite clear that these attacks are not because the service is bad for consumers... but because it's disrupting traditional players who haven't innovated. So, it came as little surprise this week to receive an email from the "Taxi, Limousine & Paratransit Association" excitedly telling me all about a new paper they've issued with a giant "warning" about what they call "rogue apps." Isn't that great? Rather than innovative and disruptive services that consumers absolutely love, they just rebrand them as "rogue" apps and they can make them seem sssssssssssssscary. The paper grades various new services, giving them a "red light," "yellow light" or "green light."

Not surprisingly, the more well known apps -- Uber, SideCar, Lyft and Tickengo -- all have received the coveted "red light." While according to the TLPA this means they're dangerous "rogue apps," to me it suggests that they're all doing something right. They're providing services that people want that are more convenient or better priced than the old guard, which is why the old guard has to attack them.

The key point they make is that these are all "unregulated" taxi services, which allows them to go into full out moral panic mode about how, without regulations, these services will likely take advantage of consumers. The paper talks about threats of "criminal" drivers and the potential for meter rigging. Of course, as we've seen in other industries, this seems like a clear case of businesses using regulations to keep out innovation and competitors, rather than for a legitimate purpose. Yes, many of those regulations were put in place for a good reason originally, yet many of those reasons really don't apply to these new services.

In the past, you needed regulations to protect you from drivers taking extra long paths to where you wanted to go, driving poorly or charging too much -- because drivers could do that and there was little recourse. But the thing about these new services, which rely heavily on online reputation systems, is that these reputation systems make the need for such regulations much less necessary. The services, like Uber, set the price and poor drivers get booted from the system based on user reviews. And, since most people who have a mobile phone these days to use one of these apps will also have GPS on those phones, people can self-monitor if the driver is taking a reasonable route. Basically, the original safety reasons (which, again, may have made sense at the time) for many of those regulations simply may not really apply to these new services. But rather than deal with that, the legacy players are doing what legacy players do: using those regulations to try to stomp out innovation and stifle competition.

So we're back with another week of awesome stuff. I really did not intend for each week to have a theme, but that's sort of how it's worked out for the past few weeks, and why stop now? This week, let's talk about speakers.

• First up, there's the Yaba Portable Speaker & Guitar Amp by PLX Devices. We've seen tiny speakers (that use whatever surface they're on) to create bigger sounds before, but the Yaba at least appears to have a pretty cool design that seems quite small for the level of sound they seem to suggest they're able to get out of it. It's tough to tell how well it really works in action unless you can see it in person, but conceptually, it looks cool. The fact that there's a version that can double as an absolutely tiny guitar amp seems quite cool for guitarists as well. Could definitely see plenty of uses for a device like this. It only just launched, but seems well on its way to hitting the goal. Early bird pricing at $39 sounds like a great deal, though they (not surprisingly) sold out quickly.
• But what if you've got some big old speakers around? How about easily turning them into portable speakers that play off of your mobile phone via Bluetooth (or regular line-in jack)? That's the plan for The Vamp, a tiny stylish box that can connect to any old speaker magnetically, providing both the connection and power. Even if you don't have old speakers around, the project's creator Paul Cocksedge notes that you can pick up old speakers for just a few bucks these days, since they've become somewhat obsolete. And yet here's a neat way to bring new life to old speakers. Cool idea. This one is still decently below its target, but it seems likely that it will get there in time.
• Of course, who uses speakers any more? These days, it's all about the earbuds. And that's why the last "awesome stuff" item this week is The Elroy. I'll admit, it took me a little while to understand exactly what this was, but basically it tries to combine the wireless flexibility of bluetooth with the general convenience of typical earbuds. That is, uptop, it's like a normal earbud setup (in fact, it sounds like you can use your own earbuds if you'd like), but about 1/3 of the way down a normal cord length, they just connect to a little bluetooth gadget which wirelessly communicates with whatever devices you want. So... no long cords getting in the way. Plus, it acts as a magnetic holder for the earbuds, which means no more dealing with tangled wires. And the phone features will even pick up / hang up as you detach / attach the earbuds to the unit. The thing that I can't fully get past is that the device itself still looks a little dorky -- not unlike bluetooth headsets, but now clipped to your shirt somewhere. The project describes it as "a piece of electronic jewelry" which sounds like a stretch. Also, it seems a bit on the pricey side for the benefit it provides -- but clearly lots of people disagree with that assessment, as it's quickly shot way past its target goal.

Well, that should give you plenty to listen to for a while. We'll be back next week, with more crowdfunded awesome stuff...

We've written about Flattr a bunch of times over the past few years, as we find it to be a really interesting experiment in both micropayments and in supporting content creators. If you're unfamiliar with the concept (which was created, in part, by Peter Sunde from The Pirate Bay), each user of Flattr puts some amount of money (total is up to the user) into its account each month, and they can then click on "Flattr" links around the internet. At the end of each month, Flattr tallies up the total amount of content you've "flattr'd" and divides your monthly allotment by that amount. Thus, if you want to give creators $10/month, and then flattr 10 pieces of content, each creator will get $1 (actually, $0.90 after Flattr's 10% cut). If you flattr 20 pieces of content, each one gets $0.50 (er... $0.45). The thing we liked about this is that it gets you past a big part of the mental transaction costs of micropayments: that is, if you have to think about "is this piece of content worth $0.50 or $0.10?" you're already going to lose a bunch of potential customers who don't even want to bother with thinking about it. But, with Flattr, they don't have to think about it for each piece of content. Once they're convinced to take part and fund their account each month, it makes no difference to them how many piece of content they flattr.

As some of you know, we've had a Flattr widget on every one of our posts for the past couple of years. It brings in a small amount of money each month -- maybe between $50 and $100 or so. Of course, part of the issue is that there are some usage hurdles. The service has a small but dedicated user base, but it seemed to stagnate over the years. On top of that, there was a bit of a chicken and egg problem, in that the process of finding content that is Flattr-enabled is still somewhat haphazard -- and then Flattr users need to remember to flattr that content. However, that's now getting much easier as Flattr has announced integration with a number of different services, including (most importantly) Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud (also: Vimeo, Flickr, github, 500px and app.net). So, now, if you connect your accounts, you can give money simply by favoriting tweets.

And, yes, that means if you want to toss a bit of change our way, you can now do so with a Flattr account by favoriting the tweets on our official Twitter account or my personal Twitter feed as well -- both of which are connected to the Techdirt Flattr account.

Of course, the other hope in all of this is that it will help lead to more people using Flattr in the first place. That's because Flattr users who favorite a tweet of someone who is not using Flattr are still designating those flattrs for that account. That doesn't mean that Flattr is holding money for those accounts (since that could add up!), but simply accumulating flattrs. Thus, if I "favorite" a Twitter account that doesn't use Flattr once a month, and that person finally signs up for Flattr a year later, it would count all 12 of my favorites as if they came that month (thus giving users on other services incentives to sign up sooner rather than later). Flattr is working on automatically notifying people who can "claim" money, but initially they're hoping the community will do that job for them, with an "unclaimed" page that highlights those with the most Flattrs on the various connected networks. Someone call Randall Munroe and let him know he has a whole bunch of unclaimed Flatttrs for the xkcd Twitter account. Ditto Wikipedia and the Torproject. Similarly, someone might want to alert Linus that his Github account is leading the way in unclaimed Github flattrs as well.

There are, also, some obvious social networks that are missing -- though I've been told that Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr are obviously key among them. It sounds like Google+ may be a bit further down the list. All in all, we still love the idea of Flattr, and think that this is a good step as it evolves its business. It still requires getting people to sign up to pay -- and that, of course, will always be a big hurdle -- but making it easier to do something once you have joined seems like a very good thing.

With the imminent death of Google Reader, I've seen a number of people whose opinions I respect quite a bit, say something about how "this shows why paying for software is important," or, alternatively "why free software isn't a good idea." One of many examples of this is Dave Winer's statement: "Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles." Mike McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks, pointed me to an article he recently wrote about "why free is bad" when it comes to "key" services. I have a ton of respect for both of these guys, and I understand exactly where they're coming from, but I don't buy it.

Plenty of "paid" services go out of business as well, and often it's because not enough people pay. So they shut down. The end result is the same thing. Obviously, services need revenue to survive, and sometimes "free" + some other business model (freemium, ads, something else) won't bring in enough revenue -- and sometimes "paid" won't bring in enough revenue. Neither business model has a "premium" so to speak on being sure to bring in enough revenue. Each has different benefits and challenges. I've seen tons of services launch with a "pay" model, only to get a dozen or so customers and have to shut down. Similarly, there have been free services that have clearly been successful and made lots of money. And lots of things in between.

As we've said before there's nothing ideologically "pure" about a fee-based business model, as opposed to one supported through other revenue streams. If you charge, you're guaranteed to have fewer users. That can be a good thing, but it can also be a huge challenge. Furthermore, the suggestion that the providers of free services don't care about their users is not definitively true either. I'm sure it's true for some services, but I get treated like crap by plenty of fee-based providers as well. Similarly, free-based providers still need to treat users right, or they go away, and there goes their business model, no matter what it is.

Simple point: just because Google couldn't make a business out of a free RSS reader, it does not mean that business models that have a free component do not work, since, obviously, much of the rest of Google's business is based on offering stuff for free, and monetizing elsewhere. And, similarly, just because you have a paid app, it does not mean that enough people will pay to make a viable business out of it. In both cases, the situations are basically the same: whatever you do, you need to be able to bring in enough revenue, and that usually needs to involve offering a good product with plenty of benefits. The business model discussion that goes on top of that is interesting, but not defining in the way some people seem to want it to be.