David Drummond (pictured), SVP and chief legal officer of Google, used the company’s official blog to argue that the company is the subject of “a hostile, organised campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” According to Drummond, this is the result of the momentum gained by the smartphone platform, which sees more than 550,000 Android devices activated every day, through a network of 39 manufacturers and 231 operators. “Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation,” he argues. It was noted that even though Google makes Android available to vendors free-of-charge, Microsoft is “attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android than Windows Phone 7,” suing vendors including Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola and Samsung for patent infringements by devices using the Google platform.

Unsurprisingly, some observers accused Google of hypocrisy, motivated by the fact that it had lost out in the high-profile battle to acquire the patent portfolio of failed Canadian telecoms giant Nortel. While Drummond said that the desire to collect patents for anti-competitive reasons is “escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth,” Google has recently bolstered its own position through a deal with IBM, and it is also reportedly eyeing the assets of InterDigital. According to mocoNews, shortly after the Google blog was published, Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft, used Twitter to state that the company had approached Google about a joint bid for patents being sold by Novell. In his blog post, Google’s Drummond asserts that these patents, along with the Nortel assets, were bought “to make sure Google didn’t get them.” According to Smith, “we asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.” Google’s own actions are not without controversy. According to a Dow Jones Newswires report today, nine formal complaints have been made to European Union regulators about the company, including three from national regulators. It is believed that the company is under scrutiny for the dominance it holds in certain sectors, including Internet search.