Explain, guy.

There are so many things going on out there that you are likely to stumble upon something that in hindsight appears serendipitous. You may have won a lottery, but since you have tickets to million different ones, it's not that amazing really.

"Prior art" is not a trademark-related term.

Your workplace? Snicker. How quaint!

That was supposed to be "user base", I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Fair enough, but Microsoft already has a social network with a p. large installed user system (MSN and Hotmail). They would just need to tweak it and add functionality (the same thing Google is doing by adding Wave to Gmail). That is where the big difference is; whereas Google codes stuff that works, and generally works better than what came before (or adds something of value at the very least), Microsoft rarely does.

As far as Facebook goes, I think that ultimately they are just poorly positioned to become a "paradigm of the internets", if you will. It is just too easy to add Facebook-like functionality to Google's already rather impressive set of tools. Plus, anyone expounding on the virtues of social networks should visit this sometimes.

And besides, Google is already making forays into just this sort of thing with Wave. Holy false dichotomy, batman.

You forget things all the time. Are you still you when you do? Your consciousness shuts down for prolonged periods (sleep). Are you still you when you do? If we are nothing but software, then we're going to have to get used to the idea that any identical (or maybe even nearly identical) copy running is in fact you, mind-bending though it may be.

(PBUH)

Let me Wikipedia that for you.

YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR.

First, your arithmetic is atrocious. Work on that. Second, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "the Microsoft fine", seeing how Microsoft has been fined several times, since unlike those European companies, it just doesn't want to learn. Third, none of the companies I listed were stupid enough to try to string the commission along. But then, with profit margins reaching 81%(par. 464), perhaps it's not really a matter of "stupidity", ey.

From what I remember, the commission can impose fines up to 10% of annual turnover, which for a company like Intel is a funny sum of money.

In case you need examples:

Saint-Gobain ( 900m euro)
ThyssenKrupp ( 500m)
Hoffmna-La Roche ( 500m)
Siemens ( 400m)
Pilkington ( 400m)
BASF ( 300m)
Otis ( 300m)

All the time?