"Google's Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products but could have more overlap, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, a week after the two came under a single boss." That's that, then.

Countries are starting to get into the patent business; countries like France and South Korea are setting up patent entities to protect domestic companies. "Intellectual Discovery presents itself as a defensive alliance: if a South Korean company finds itself targeted in a lawsuit, for instance, it can access the patents being compiled by Intellectual Discovery to hit back." I support this. If, say, a small Dutch company were to come under unfair patent aggression by bullies like Apple and Microsoft (quite likely these days), I damn well expect my government to protect them from it. If you can't fix the system, work with it. As simple as that.

"With the Samsung Galaxy S4 presumably coming soon, many are excited about the possibility of running a more stock Android-based experience, like CyanogenMod, on the hardware. It looks like that's going to be a slower transition than many were hoping, as the current Samsung CM maintainers have said that they have no plans to support the device." If you like custom ROMs, don't buy Samsung. As simple as that.

Nokia has gotten an injunction against HTC in Germany over a patent on a power-saving feature in Qualcomm chips (?!). Nokia's response illustrates why the company started its recent patent offensive: "Nokia is pleased with this decision, which confirms the quality of Nokia's patent portfolio." If nobody buys your phones and your business is failing spectacularly, you have to promote something else of value to paint yourself as an interesting acquisition target. Patents it is, then. If you can't compete, litigate. Update: HTC's statement is pretty damning.

Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry's CEO: "Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that. History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don't innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old." Ironic, perhaps, that this comes from a BlackBerry CEO, but that doesn't make him wrong - although I'm sure the usual suspects will claim that it does.

In an unexpected turn of events, we're seeing 'FUD' being spread about Microsoft, for once. Lots of articles on the web highlighting how the support lifecycle for Window Phone 7/8 and 8 is to end in July 2014, as if WP8 devices won't be getting any updates beyond that point. This already seemed unlikely early to me, and with my magical unicorn powers of, you know, common sense I already made the assumption that this only applies to versions 7.8 and 8.0 - not 8.5 or 9.0 or whatever the next version will be. WMPowerUser shares my unicorn powers: "On the other hand the OS support date is reset with any never version of the OS, so a Windows Phone 8.5 or 9 update in November 2013 would bring along its own 18 month of security updates. Microsoft has already promised all current Windows Phone 8 handsets will receive the next major version of the operating system."

Every year on World Consumer Rights Day (March 15), government-controlled China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasts a special report (in Chinese) damning companies for abusing Chinese consumers. This year the targets included Apple. Apple was accused of giving Chinese consumers worse service than customers in other countries, specifically of giving them replacements that included cases from their old phone, while customers in the UK would get a 100% new product.

Ubuntu has come under a decent amount of flack over the past few months, particularly over their decision to use the 'Dash Search' to return results from Amazon by default in their most recent release.

Apple's Phil Shiller has been trash-talking Android in the press these past few days - just as Samsung is about to launch its Galaxy S4. "Public, preemptive slamming of a competitor is far outside Apple's PR wheelhouse; it's a dramatic shift for a company used to making news rather than reacting to it. But why is it happening?" The Verge hits the nail on the head: "Cupertino's behavior this week is yet another symptom of Samsung's stratospheric rise in the smartphone market globally, a rise that challenges Apple and has outright stifled Android competitors like HTC and Sony."

Apple has released OS X 10.8.3. The biggest improvement is Windows 8 support in Boot Camp - although Windows 7 drivers seemed to work fine as well for running Windows 8 on Macs (or so I've read). You know how to get it.

Dianne Hackborn has written two detailed comments in reply to the Palm article, mostly dealing with Cobalt, but also touching upon Palm OS' influence on Android. Hackborn worked at Be, Inc. for a few years, before moving to PalmSource, and has been working at Google on Android for the past seven years. "I would like to say the design of Android actually took a lot of inspiration from Palm. Many of the core engineers on Android came from PalmSource (most having arrived there from Be), and saw Android as an opportunity to do what PalmSource was trying to accomplish in an environment that was more likely to succeed."

"We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months." This makes me very, very sad. Any good alternatives - alternatives with Windows Phone and Metro applications, that is?

"For this preliminary release, we are focusing on the developer experience, working to enable Qt developers to easily run and test their applications on Android devices. While there's nothing preventing you from deploying your app to an app store with Qt 5.1, we're recommending that people wait until Qt 5.2 before they do that, as we'd like to put some more work into improving that experience: making more options for how your app is deployed, adding more polish in general, and adding more support for Android APIs, both by allowing you to extend your app with Java code or by mapping them in C++ APIs, whichever makes the most sense."

Andy Rubin, who created Android and has led its development both at Android Inc. and later at Google, has decided to step down as the big Android boss at Google. Having created the world's "most-used mobile operating system", as Google CEO Larry Page refers to it, I'd say his stint has been successful. Interestingly enough, he will be succeeded by Sundar Pichai - Chrome OS boss. Yes.