Google actually has very few patents. Which makes sense. You own and generate a lot of patents if

1. You're interested in shaking-down others (IBM comes to mind)

2. You've written a big cheque to someone who shook you down and now you're trying to defend yourself.

#1 certainly doesn't apply to Google - not yet at least. And I don't think that Google has been badly burned in a patent dispute with anyone yet, so it doesn't look like they've made generating defensive lawsuits a big priority yet.

One source on the web from a couple of years ago says that Google's name appears on only about 190 patents in total. I did a search and was able to find ~600 patents with Google as the assignee. The same search yielded ~3700 patents for Apple, ~17000 for Microsoft, and ~64000 for IBM. Apparently Apple was issued more than 700 patents in 2010 alone, versus Google's 282. For the last few years, this is how many patents some of these companies have been issued:

#2010: Apple 722 Google 282 Microsoft 3305 Foxconn/honhai 1885

#2009: Apple 399 Google 143 Microsoft 3160 Foxconn/honhai 1310

#2008: Apple 254 Google 60 Microsoft 2310 Foxconn/honhai 1005

#2007: Apple 157 Google 35 Microsoft 1958 Foxconn/honhai 673

#2006: Apple 133 Google 22 Microsoft 1614 Foxconn/honhai 653

#1999-2005 Apple 843 Google 14 Microsoft 3643 Foxconn/honhai 3262

Searching through some of these patents is really discouraging. I remember that when Apple brought their suit against HTC (really, against Android and Google), there were a lot of armchair lawyers here on HN and elsewhere claiming just how obvious some of the patents that Apple was weilding were. At the time I actually believed that some of them had merit. But looking through some of these patents, especially some of the Foxconn ones, is there anyone who really believes that the front bezel design for a PC case (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D512721.html) or the particulars of a generic USB stick (http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D537819.html) should be patentable? Some of the stuff that I've been looking at over the last hour makes Apple's and Microsoft's patents look like Bell's patent on the telephone.

The patents that start with "D" are design patents, not utility patents. I don't really know how big a problem they are. It seems like it would be pretty easy to avoid them if you knew about them, although how you would know about them all I have no idea.

My understanding is that a design patent is really only any good against a near-exact copy of the design.

Did you notice a trend in the patents GOOG has received over time?

Actually, to my knowledge Google has no history of ever suing over patents, not just in the mobile space but in search - where Google holds some very important patents.

Or am I forgetting something?

Most of the companies being sued over mobile patents are bigger than Google.

Err, no.

Apple is bigger than Google, but the others are all smaller, generally considerably so.

Samsung probably gets close, but I can't work out the valuation of the whole Samsung corporation. If I'm understanding the company structure correctly the Samsung Electronics subsidiary is valued at $19B [1], vs $185B for Google. Nokia is $31B.

Edit: Unless you meant bigger on the linked graphic? In that case, yes, you are right. But that only indicates revenue (from mobile, in early 2010), not profits or valuation.

[1] http://www.google.com/finance?q=SEO%3A005930

Another measure would be number of employees. Google has 24k. Bigger on the linked graphic are Oracle (105k), Nokia (132k), Hitachi (360k), Sharp (64k), LG (177k), Apple (49k), Samsung (276k), and Motorola (60k).

Another measure would be total assets. Google has $58 billion. Oracle has $60 billion. Hitachi has $95 billion. Nokia has $57 billion. Apple has $75 billion. Samsung has $294 billion. Microsoft has $86 billion.

I would consider total assets to be a better measure than market cap when it comes to determining whether the company is larger or smaller in the context of a lawsuit.

The total assets point is good, and would play well to a jury. But to be fair, total liabilities should be deducted. Samsung, for example has over $180B in liabilities (presumably those valuable electronics fabs are debt-financed)

To be honest, the assets, revenue or the total employees of a company don't really matter in this case.

Google is a relative new comer to the mobile space. All the other companies have been entrenched for a long time and have a much bigger patent portfolio compared to Google.