Mercer's Hire: To Own the Competition You Have to Buy Parts of the Competition

An interesting story from the other day, likely making the rounds within the Mac and tech circles: Paul Mercer was recently hired by Palm Inc., the ones that make the, yes, Palm devices, to help create something that can compete against the iPhone. Nothing new there. Every phone company is scrambling to beat it. The catch is that Mercer was hired away from Apple, where he was an engineer and helped created the software end of the iPod.