But now the guy who pushed that campaign has gone over to Google. And Samsung’s new spot doesn’t even bother to tease the competition. Here’s the company’s Apple-less Super Bowl spot (remember, you no longer have to wait to see the game if you want to watch the ads):

Peter Kafka Patented Snap Judgement Review: Bob Odenkirk, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are all awesome. But they’re more awesome when they’re not doing this stuff for a sponsor.

That’s up 2.26 percent from the day’s opening price of $758.20. The company’s previous high was $774.38 in October.

Google seems to be benefitting from broader bullishness as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 14,000 for the first time since 2007 based on the latest U.S. jobs report.

Google beat expectations (well, mostly — Motorola complicated things) with its fourth-quarter earnings report on Jan. 22. And the tech sector overall is having a good earnings season, with strong reports from Qualcomm, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple, among others.

The company also submitted a proposal to the European Commission about antitrust concerns yesterday. As we reported, a source familiar with the content of the submission said it was only marginally stronger than the deal Google and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced to a month ago.

Put together, that could mean Google is likely to scoot away from the threat of major regulatory battles on multiple fronts.

Google also said today that it had created a €60 million fund to support digital publishing innovation in France as part of the resolution of its disputes with French news sites.

Google’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $11.34 billion, up from $8.13 billion in 2011. Google reported a non-GAAP profit of $3.57 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $3.13 billion a year before.

Minus traffic acquisition costs and Motorola Home, but including other units, Google’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012 was $11.34 billion, up from $8.13 billion in 2011.

Google reported a non-GAAP profit of $3.57 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $3.13 billion a year before.

But cost-per-click prices decreased 6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, recovering 2 percent from the third quarter of 2012.

Financial analysts’ estimates for Google’s most recent quarter were a bit screwy, because many of them fully included the Motorola Home unit, which Google is selling to Arris for $2.35 billion. Google put out a special accounting note on Friday to warn analysts their numbers were probably too high.

One analyst who did excerpt Motorola was J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth, whose estimate for core Google was $9.7 billion in net revenue. By that measure, Google had a narrow beat, with $9.83 billion in core Google revenue minus traffic acquisition costs.

Here’s what Google executives Larry Page, Patrick Pichette and Nikesh Arora discussed with analysts on their quarterly open call:

1:34 pm: Larry Page kicks off the call talking about excellence.

Page, more soft-spoken than ever, talks up the expansion of Google’s Knowledge Graph and voice search around the world.

He praises Google’s apps: Maps (for iOS in the past quarter), YouTube, Chrome, Google search and Gmail, as well as Google Now.

Mobile devices have been one of Google’s biggest bets of the past few years, as they are driving growth more quickly than anything since the birth of the computer, Page notes.

Google Play, in its first year, has content deals with all the big labels, studios and publishers.

As for Motorola, Page hints at the future of devices. “Battery life is a huge issue. When you drop your phone, it shouldn’t go splat. Everything should run faster and easier.”

Our biggest challenge is focus, Page says. “We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin.”

Page wraps by thanking employees. He really didn’t say much.

1:45 pm: Patrick Pichette performs the financials.

On Motorola, Pichette says, “We inherited a 12-18 month product pipeline that we’re still working through.”

Policy changes during the quarter lowered paid click growth and other measures, Pichette says. But they were good changes for users.

On cost per click, Pichette says it reflects currency fluctuation.

Over in after-hours trading, Google is up $31.23 to $734.10, a gain of 4.44 percent.

Pichette reiterates that capex and cash flow still include Motorola Home because of the weird way this is being dealt with.

1:54 pm: Nikesh Arora on advertising. Across search, display, YouTube and more, top advertisers are spending more than $50 million per year.

Mobile queries continue to power overall growth in search, says Arora. Distinguishing between form factors is becoming less valuable.

Shopping search — where Google controversially now only includes paid listings — is going well, Arora says.

For example, Home Depot mobile commerce sales have quadrupled in the past year.

On YouTube and display, “video is a key language that brands speak,” so it’s core. YouTube’s redesign was optimized for the multiscreen world. Four billion hours of video watched per month in 2012. Gangnam Style generated more than $8 million. Seventy percent of in-stream ads are “true view” format where watchers can skip.

Candidates who spent more on Google tended to win in the most recent U.S. elections.

2:01 pm: Q&A starts.

Question about traffic acquisition costs. Pichette says the big trend in mobile is growing. Distribution is worth paying for and that’s true for mobile, too. TAC is not a new phenomenon for Google, and it’s being managed carefully.

Question about answers instead of links. Page says Knowledge Graph is still in the early stages. Internationalization is hard work, and we’re at one percent of where we should be, he says. When we provide better answers and modalities, we increase the amount of times you’ll come back, and generally we monetize these things.

Question about how on Google Shopping, user still has to leave the site to transact. Page says this user experience will improve over time but he won’t comment on how.

What’s the strategy around travel? Page says the main thing is to understand a complex problem — like vacation logistics — and solve all at once like a human assistant would.

What’s the monetization potential for Google Maps? Page says maps are critical to search. “We have to understand where things are in the real world.” We already make quite a bit of money on maps as a part of our core business. On the maps themselves, we’re at the early stage. It’s likely to be a great source of revenue.

Without anyone mentioning Facebook, Page answers a question about the company’s “graphical search.”

“We’ve been at search for quite a while, and made investments in all sorts of areas — like maps, Knowledge Search. The business has changed a lot,” Page says. “I feel very confident of our core business of finding things and getting people information.”

Non-sequitur-y two-part question about Motorola’s finances as well as the commercialization of driverless cars and whether that relates to Android.

Page says Motorola acquisition is in early days. And driverless cars are exciting. Google is already working with car companies so Android is probably going to be used in cars before automated cars get to the mainstream.

Pichette: “We do care about profitability, and that is our goal in all the areas we invest. We’re not in the business of losing money with Motorola.”

Question about mobile business. Page says usage follows great products, so that’s what he’s focused on. He’s very optimistic and thinks CPCs will improve. He’d like to simplify the ad programs for advertisers across all these platforms and expects to make progress on that soon.

Question about pace of headcount increase and capex. Pichette says they’re lumpy and correspond to investment in various efforts. Page says he’s working to manage the “smoothness” of hiring to improve operations.

Another question about mobile advertising. Google is working to get advertisers to make mobile sites and to run campaigns across devices and form factors. Page jumps in to say he thinks mobile-specific sites are annoying and confusing from his Nexus 4. He thinks experiences should work on all devices pretty well.

When will CPCs on mobile and desktop be equal? Page says he won’t make predictions, as one will always be bigger than the other, but he’s not sure which way. (Ha! How’s that for a persnickety non-answer?)

When will you be able to enter markets like China? Arora says Google does have businesses in China, in cases where products can be unfettered, and there even is a small amount of revenue coming from China.

Will there be an impairment test on Motorola regarding standards-essential patents? Pichette says there’s no information that leads Google to believe there will need to be an impairment test. And SEPs are only a small part of the Motorola portfolio.

Question about Google Fiber rollout. Page says he’s excited about the possibilities. Pichette says Google is really focused on Kansas City.

“It’s not a hobby,” Pichette says. “But right now we just gotta nail it in Kansas City.”

Pichette says Google’s C Share plan won’t go into effect until after the second quarter of this year, as it’s waiting on litigation and then board processes.

2:42 pm: And that’s a wrap.

To spell that out: Google’s numbers, which used to be pretty easy to read, have gotten a lot more complicated in the last few quarters because of its Motorola acquisition, which is essentially forcing analysts to make sense of two different companies in the same report.

And today’s numbers will be even more complicated, because Google is selling off part of Motorola, and doesn’t plan on counting that part of the company in its results, even though they’ll still be there for accounting purposes.

Got all that? Google doesn’t think you do, which is why it sent out a super-rare memo to analysts last week, suggesting that “people who follow our company may not be fully aware” of what today’s numbers would look like.

Looks like some of that confusion still remains. So the quickest shortcut for the afternoon will probably be to concentrate on Q4′s “core Google” numbers — the ones that don’t include Motorola. No one seems to have a formal census of those estimates, but here’s where J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth pins his:

Net revenue: $9.7B (+10.8 percent Q/Q, 19.3 percent Y/Y)
Paid click growth: Up 28.5 percent
Cost per click growth: Down 9 percent
Operating income: $3.8B (+39.1 percent margin)

As always, it would be great to see Google liven up its reliably dull calls with real color and detail about the business — for instance, we’d love to hear them talk candidly about the effects of their antitrust win (at least in the U.S.) this month. And, as always, we don’t expect to hear them say squat.

But, assuming that the release doesn’t come out early today, my colleague Liz Gannes will be on hand at 4 pm ET to start covering the news. Good luck, Liz!

Google issued the heads-up this morning, via a blog post on its investor relations page, ahead of Q4 earnings on Tuesday.

The gist: Google is selling off its Motorola set-top-box unit — its “Home business” — so it’s not going to include numbers from that group in its main report.

But apparently the Street hasn’t figured that one out. “As of this writing, a majority of Wall Street analysts who cover Google have not reflected the Home business as discontinued operations in their estimates,” writes chief accountant Brent Callinicos.

In real-world terms, Google is telling the Street that its Q4 net revenue will be about $1 billion less than the $12.4 billion they are expecting, and that their consensus EPS of $10.58 is about 40 cents too high, as well.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth put out new estimates last night that don’t include the set-top-box group. Here’s what those look like (the new numbers also include a few tweaks Anmuth made regarding the rest of Google’s operations):

That is: What is Google required to do with the existing standards-essential patent cases it is currently fighting on behalf of its Motorola subsidiary against Microsoft and Apple?

The FTC got Google to sign a consent decree saying it wouldn’t seek injunctions over its SEPs — patents that contribute to foundational parts of smartphones and other devices across the industry — as long as other companies were willing to license them.

But what happens to existing cases — for instance, one involving Motorola patents on the video compression standard H.264, which Microsoft wants to license for Xbox but not on Google’s proposed royalty terms?

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan said last week, “The answer is that under the order they do not have to drop their appeals of SEP cases, but at the same time they cannot obtain or enforce any SEP exclusion orders or injunctions.”

But Microsoft pointed out, in a filing released today by the U.S. International Trade Commission (see below), that the FTC said last week in multiple parts of the published agreements and public statements that Google had to withdraw all its related SEP claims.

From the official statement from Jan. 3: “Google’s settlement with the Commission requires Google to withdraw its claims for injunctive relief on FRAND-encumbered SEPs around the world.”

Then, at the press conference, when asked directly about whether Google would withdraw its cases, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said, “My understanding is they’re going to stop trying to seek [an] exclusion order at the ITC.”

Microsoft notes that the ITC case is ongoing; in fact, the next deadline for briefs is tomorrow. So this issue needs to get figured out ASAP.

Asked for additional comment, the FTC’s Kaplan said, “I’m still trying to get clarification on the language from the statement that you asked about.”

A spokeswoman for Google said she did not have anything to announce on the ITC cases at this time.

Microsoft filing regarding Google-FTC

Current Good CEO King Lee will remain on the company’s board and serve as executive chairman.

The mobile position at Citi, meanwhile, has seen considerable turnover. Before Wyatt, Citi hired former Samsung executive Omar Khan, who left after about a year to become CEO of security firm NQ Mobile.

Update, 2:30 pm: In an interview, Wyatt said it was hard to leave after just six months in what she said was a very fun job at Citi.

“The timing is not great, but the opportunity is just not one you could say no to,” Wyatt said.

There are a lot of interesting parallels between Wyatt’s past gigs and her new one. At Motorola, Wyatt headed the company’s enterprise unit. Motorola also owned Good Technology for a time, though Wyatt never had oversight of it.

Good Technology has been in the mobile space since the early days of the BlackBerry. Its first server software worked on RIM’s devices and also with a handheld made by Good itself, though it quickly exited the hardware business.

Over the years, Good has built up technology for managing devices, offering secure corporate intranet access and browsing as well as handling e-mail and calendar.

“They have been planting seeds for a long time,” Wyatt said. And now, Wyatt said, the company is poised for big growth as nearly every major company is bringing in iPads and looking for ways to support a range of iOS, Android and other mobile devices.

Citi, meanwhile, is among the many large banks that use Good’s services to manage their mobile devices. Wyatt officially starts in her new role on Monday–though she also has some projects to finish up for Citi.

Standard-essential patents — which cover basic technology shared in an industry — have become a key issue as smartphone competitors fight over intellectual property. Having been lumped into the the long-running FTC antitrust investigation of Google over the past couple of months, patents weren’t originally an issue, but they emerged as an area where regulators could find fault and make a deal.

Google became a key SEP owner when it bought Motorola for $12.5 billion last year, and it has continued Motorola’s efforts against competitors like Microsoft and Apple to try to stop them from producing products on the grounds of patent infringement.

But at the FTC’s urging, Google has now promised that it won’t seek injunctions against willing licensees to block them from using patents that have been included in industry standards.

Still, there are some allowed exceptions to the FTC order. For instance, if the licensee is outside the U.S., or if it doesn’t agree to terms set by court arbitration, then it’s okay for Google as a SEP owner to ask for an injunction.

So what does this mean for the larger standards-essential patent fights? A few things — with a mix of winners and losers.

1. The FTC is now on record saying that Google acted unfairly. That’s big.
2. Google doesn’t have to drop its existing appeals of SEP cases, according to clarifying comments by FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan. However, Google can’t obtain or enforce any SEP exclusion orders or injunctions.
3. Google’s agreement with the FTC is binding. But it is not necessarily as strong as what Apple and Microsoft already committed to voluntarily when the Department of Justice and other agencies in Europe were looking into the matter. They both said that they won’t seek injunctive relief based on SEPs, ever.

Starting with the first point, the FTC said Motorola/Google went back on its commitments to license SEPs when it tried to get injunctions in federal district court and from the U.S. International Trade Commission to block its competitors who were willing to license the patents.

Here’s the quote:

Motorola … violated the FRAND commitments made to ETSI, ITU, and IEEE by seeking, or threatening, to enjoin certain competitors from marketing and selling products compliant with the relevant standards, like the iPhone and the Xbox, from the market unless the competitor paid higher royalty rates or made other concessions. At all times relevant to the allegations in the Proposed Complaint, these competitors — Microsoft and Apple — were willing to license Motorola’s SEPs on FRAND terms.

For Microsoft and Apple, which have both been battling it out with Google and Motorola over disagreements concerning SEPs, this is vindication of their arguments. They have claimed for some time now that Google has not honored its obligation to license Motorola’s standards-essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND).

And now the FTC has come forward and said not only that this is indeed the case, but that Google can’t try to ban competing products using patents they licensed under a FRAND agreement. The settlement effectively de-weaponizes Motorola’s SEPs.

Here’s the kitschy infographic the FTC created to explain its take on the issue:

FTC

And there are broader implications as well for other companies that have been using SEPs in a similar fashion. Certainly, the FTC’s decision does not bode well for Samsung, which has also been accused of misusing SEPs in a number of patent suits.

But on the other hand, perhaps the FTC could have been stricter. Microsoft committed via a public statement in February 2012 to never “seek an injunction or exclusion order against any firm on the basis of those essential patents,” and Apple said that seeking SEP injunctions was a violation of FRAND in a letter that came to light around the same time.

Still, the Microsoft and Apple statements “have very little legal effect,” said Jorge Contreras, a law professor at American University who specializes in patents and standards, speaking after the consent order was published today.

By contrast, Contreras said, “Here we have an actual proposed consent order that will have, with respect to Google, the force of law. It’s much more binding, and it’s much more detailed.”

Also, as folks who align with Google might point out, Microsoft and Apple’s patent portfolios aren’t as heavy on SEPs, so these voluntary commitments might have been a bit cleaner to make.

Microsoft, as might be predicted, was unhappy with the FTC consent order and other aspects of the Thursday’s announcement, saying they didn’t go far enough. Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner wrote in a blog post:

As the FTC recognizes today, Google did abuse its standards-essential patents by seeking injunctions on the basis of them. Given this, we are disappointed that the FTC accepted less relief from Google than the DOJ obtained from Microsoft and Apple last year and the FTC obtained from Bosch in a separate case just a few weeks ago.

Microsoft’s commitment is two sentences.  The FTC’s proposed consent decree on patents runs for 13 pages, most of which spell out exceptions—the various circumstances when Google can sue for an injunction on its standards-essential patents. This stands in stark contrast to the commitments made by Microsoft, Apple and Bosch.

With reporting by John Paczkowski.

“Google buys Motorola for its patents.” How is that working out?

–Horace Dediu, via Twitter