Will Apple now sue Google?

There was an elephant in the courtroom when Apple won its billion-dollar patent infringement award against Samsung, and its name is Google. After all, Google engineers were directly involved in developing at least one of the phones (the Nexus S) found to have infringed Apple's patents, and every one of the accused devices was running Google's Android operating system -- the "stolen product" Steve Jobs had promised two years earlier to destroy.

So why hasn't Apple sued Google directly? That's a good question.

Clearly Apple made a strategic decision early on to go after the manufacturers of Android hardware -- first HTC, then Motorola, and finally Samsung -- rather than the company that designed their software platform. In retrospect, it was smart move. As Apple laid out its narrative for the jury in its closing arguments, the Samsung story was an easy one to tell. Not only had the Korean manufacturer imitated Apple's designs down to the boxes the devices came in, but it left a paper trail that showed the company scrutinizing every aspect of the iPhone touchscreen for ways Apple's design decisions could improve Samsung's products. Whether Google left a similar paper trail remains to be seen. Moreover, Google can claim, as it did when it was sued by Oracle, that Android doesn't produce any direct revenue for the company, so there can be zero damages. Android may generate billions of ad dollars, but that's a harder story to sell a jury.