We’ve heard from a source that sometime late last night, Facebook was told that they would not be a part of Apple’s event today. This is nothing new. Companies are told to prepare to go on stage at these events all the time only to get pulled at the last second. It’s just a bit odd that a company as large as Facebook was passed over.

I find this extremely hard to believe. Why would Apple, at an event called "Let's talk iPhone" want to share the stage with Facebook, arguably a future serious competitor, to announce the release of a Facebook iPad app, which frankly, is not only long overdue, but also does nothing to further Apple's clear message of new iPhone and Siri today?

If anything, I'd think Apple would want to shove this one under the rug and hope no one noticed that the iPad app wasn't already there a year ago.

Let Facebook make its own announcement for its own iPad app. I can't see why Apple would have even considered making this a part of today's event, let alone cancel it at the last minute. Sounds like a source trying to cover his tracks to me.

Sometimes rumors are just wrong. Like 90% of the other rumors about today.

Don’t copy other people’s stuff
It seems obvious – but don’t copy Google’s (or anyone else’s) trademarks or logos. Even for a short-term experiment. It might seem tempting to piggy-back off the success of a popular name, but it’s not worth the risk. Big corporations don’t understand, even if you’re “trying to do the right thing”.

I think this story demonstrates, more than anything about Google, just how justified trademark infringement cases are. People like to lump in these cases with all the patent trolls out there, but the fact of the matter is that what this guy did with his app icon is a tiny version of what Samsung is doing with just about all of its Android products: misrepresenting your products as those that come from another company that is far more successful.

I have no doubt that the only reason this app took off is because the icon convinced most people it was an official Google app. Disclaimers in the description are meaningless. I know from experience, most people don't bother thoroughly reading your app description, believe me. Especially on a free app. They see a logo, and they grab the app.

That's why when he re-released the app with a non-Google looking icon, it went nowhere.

Now, this guy says his mistake was unintentional, and it may well have been. Because a lot of people don't understand just how valuable a brand is to a company. But in Samsung's case, it's beyond clear that the copying is blatant and very much intentional. And the financial impact and the long-term impact these sorts of impersonations have on a brand is incalculable.

So while I can't stand most of the legal craziness going on lately, and I don't agree with all of Apple's most recent legal tactics, I have to say, when it comes to the trademark stuff, I can totally see the point.

Our relationship with the web is going to be undergoing a fundamental shift over the next decade, I suspect, because it has to undergo a shift. Historically, we’ve paid for television, movies, books, and magazines, and in many cases we pay for those things even when they contain ads—and we pay a premium for magazines and TV shows that are ad-free. But apparently we believe that when you Just Add Internet, only greedy people would keep asking for money, because everything is subsidized by magical money-shitting ponies.

I'm fine with services that either present ads or have a subscription fee for no ads. I'm even fine with services that have a fee AND have ads. I can choose to buy into these services or not.

What I can't stand is the Silicon Valley startup mentality of "get lots of users and then figure out how to make money on them later."

It's not like Twitter didn't know the time would come when it needed to make money from its users. It's just a little bit sleazy to lure people into a free ride, only to pull the rug out from under them later with ads. That's what will piss off the users. Not the money. The lie.

I understand this is M.O for most of the Internet. But THAT's the thing that needs to change. This notion that you should get popular first, then profitable second. The idea that once people are hooked on something, they'll start paying because they have to. It's bad business.

Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

Well said. This is the best piece I've seen yet to sum up today's announcement.

The Chronicle's Will Kane, one of the reporters covering last week's BART demonstrations, overheard more or less - the longer quotes in the following aren't verbatim, but approximations of what was said, says Kane - the following exchange:

Angry older male protester to officer: "You cop, you're a pig. You bitch. You're a bitch. That's all."

Angry older female protester to angry older male protester: "Excuse me, sir, can you please not use a derogatory term for females, even when you're insulting a cop."

Angry older male: "Oh, OK. I am sorry. You're right."

African American male cop, at whom the angry older male had been yelling, lifting his shield: "I can assure you, ma'am, that that didn't offend me. I've been called a lot worse."

Angry older female: "Don't talk to me, you pig."

Only in San Francisco.

In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

The worst part of this news is that some will read it as proof that trying to compete with Apple with an integrated hardware/software solution is the wrong approach.

It's not the wrong approach. It's just an approach that needs time and lots of losing quarters to work. The product needs to evolve, the platform needs to grow slowly over time. And a company like HP doesn't have the patience for that.

I would feel bad about this, as I was a Palm customer for years, and I still feel some sort of strange kinship with the old company and with Jon Rubenstein, who I met once. I was rooting for WebOS, as a lot of other Apple fans were. But it wasn't to be.

At the end of the day, I had never spent a dime of my own money on any WebOS product. So what right do I have to feel bad when the platform doesn't survive?

And don't think this is a failure of the integrated solution. The old Microsoft model of licensing doesn't work, either. Android and Windows Phone are proving that. (Yes, Android is falling apart. Keep watching Google's behavior over the next few months. They had one good year in 2010, and this year has all been downhill. And they know they need a change to salvage the thing.)

The bottom line is that no one has figured out how to beat Apple at this. And it doesn't look like anyone will anytime soon.

You hear people say all the time that they want Apple to have strong competitors, because it's good for Apple to have competitors to keep it on its toes. But that's never really been true, has it? Apple generally just doesn't pay attention to its competitors. Sure, they steal an idea or two from time to time, but does anyone think that notification center NEVER would have happened without Android?

And competition just for its own sake is useless. What Apple needs is WORTHY opponents, and it doesn't have any.

They're a leading home device maker, and that's also a big opportunity," Google CEO Larry Page said of Motorola on Monday. "We're working with them in the industry to really accelerate innovation.

By "accelerate innovation" Page means shoving free Google TV-enabled Motorola set-top boxes down the throats of consumers via the cable companies, and then claiming victory in market share over Apple.

They couldn't sell the crappy Google TV to consumers, but that doesn't mean they can't bundle it to Comcast and Time Warner. Why improve the product into something people actually like when you can just buy the company that has all the licensing deals with providers? That way people will own a Google TV, whether they want one or not.

Same old Google.

The high-level talks between Google and Motorola started about five weeks ago. Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha were talking directly, and only a handful of executives were brought into discussions. Our sources suggest that Android co-founder Andy Rubin was brought into the talks only very recently.

Like I said earlier, this move was more about defense than any sort of long-term mastermind plan, as suggested by the delusional Dan Lyons.

The short span of time suggests that this was a REACTION to losing the Nortel bid, not part of the Nortel original plans. And the fact that they didn't even bring in their key Android executive until late in the process suggests that it was, as I said before, a gut reaction, rather than a well-considered tactical move. They are panicking over there, and it's starting to show. Honeycomb 3.0 was a disaster. Google is gaining no traction in the tablet space. Mobile phone market share growth—the only stat where Google was clearly winning—has slowed (even after rigging the numbers by counting cheap Chinese knockoffs as Android phones.) Microsoft is clearly still trying to muscle its way into the space, and could even still carve a niche for itself, especially if it keeps trying to buy more of Google's partners. And even with strong market share, Google is still making little money with the Android initiative.

This Motorola purchase could very well backfire on Google, or it could turn out well, if they play their cards right. The problem is, Google has never been any good at the cards.

So it all depends on whether Google is ready to take Android into the territory of a "walled garden" as so many like to call the Apple approach. Drop the other partners, start making "Google" phones for real. Didn't work for the Nexus series, but then again, the most dedicated Android fans all say that the Nexus phones were better than anything else out there. Maybe they can pull that off, but I doubt it. Not without a retail strategy in place.

That does seem to be the eventual plan, though. The question is, what happens in the short term to Google's numbers if HTC, Samsung, etc. see the writing on the wall and jump ship before Google can get a decent line of Motorola Android phones going?

And what will all those Google fanboys say when Android suddenly becomes available on only one brand of phones?

The most important thing we can take away from all of this is that Google is not playing on its own turf. It no longer controls Android's destiny, if it ever did. Apple is still the only company in tech playing offense.