Frankly, it should be ok to enter the market the way Google did.
With Android Google stepped into a mature market for the first time and appears to have committed rookie errors - it's not the stuff in the Nortel or Novell portfolios which is generating income for Microsoft - and a lot of Microsoft's patents were created through old fashioned in-house R&D - exactly the sort of innovation which should be protected.
<cynical_speculation>It may have been in Google's interest to turn Andorid into Open Source in October of 2008 due to the liability incurred when Microsoft acquired Danger's patent portfolio earlier in the year. Particularly in light of Google's antipatent corporate culture and Andy Rubin's role in creating Google's phone software.</cynical_speculation>
Only if that "innovation" is actually novel, non-obvious, specific, and useful, and certainly not for 20 years (roughly 13 generations in tech years).
It may have been in Google's interest to turn Andorid into Open Source in October of 2008 due to the liability incurred when Microsoft acquired Danger's patent portfolio earlier in the year.
If Android was always based on the Linux kernel, then they probably had an open source plan from the beginning.
Edit: With Android Google stepped into a mature market for the first time and appears to have committed rookie errors
This sounds like code for "Google stepped into our territory and didn't pay its protection money."
This really irks anyone who, like me, believes that the only limitations on a tech company should be from the laws of physics, the current state of technology, and basic ethics (e.g. don't blatantly rip off competitors).
Instead, they appear to have rushed the development of Android without proper due diligence in order to be first to market with (operational and technical merits of Android aside) what could be called an "iPhone knockoff".
Android was under development years before the iPhone was announced. Google bought Android before iPhone development started. The Openmoko project was also announced before the iPhone was announced. The iPhone is simply a single (very good) implementation of an idea that had been brewing in the mind of the Technium.
Uh, Google is organized enough to create a profitable OS which well on the way to becoming the dominant smart phone OS in the world.
"Appropriately" here would mean that "organized to join the patent mafia"?
There may be more than one thing wrong, and one of those things is Google may not be appropriately organized to operate in some of the markets it has chosen to enter - e.g. the mobile phone industry. Their corporate strategy for the search and advertising services upon which the company was built is centered around trade secrets - and that makes a lot of sense given the sausage factory model upon which they have built those services.
Unfortunately for Google, telecommunications doesn't work that way and never has - that's why Nortel had such a big patent portfolio and why Bell Labs did things like patent Shockley's work on the transistor. This is why it takes longer for more mature companies to bring competitive products to a new market segment - e.g. HP felt it prudent to acquire WebOS before head to head competition with the iPad and Microsoft's WP7 doesn't look and feel like iOS.
In a nutshell, Google's problem is that in the telecommunications industry, they did not innovate through a traditional R&D process. Instead, they appear to have rushed the development of Android without proper due diligence in order to be first to market with (operational and technical merits of Android aside) what could be called an "iPhone knockoff". Now that lack of due diligence is coming back to bite them.
<speculation>Could it be that senior Google leadership's fascination with the Sidekick which led to Android lead developer Andy Rubin's being brought onboard led to the damn the torpedoes approach to IP surrounding Android? And could it be that the patents upon which Microsoft's license strategy for Android is base came from their acquisition of Rubin's former startup, Danger, which he left in order to found Android? </speculation>