I’m writing up the latest quarterly numbers — sales of $46 billion! — and realizing (again) that in 10 or 20 years, when we look back on this decade, Apple, perhaps more than anything else, will be what we think of when we think of this era. Here is a $100-billion-plus company that just grew at a 73-percent rate. That’s just not supposed to happen. Sales in this recent quarter were greater than in all of fiscal 2009. And there is nothing in sight to stop this freight train. Superlatives fall short. This is beyond dominating an industry. This is about defining an age. Apple, we are not worthy.

As I reported in this week’s Newsweek, Apple’s “thermonuclear war” on Android smartphone makers has been fizzling out lately. Most of Apple’s legal claims have been tossed out, and the two minor victories Apple has scored were so trivial that opponents could work around the claim by making minor changes to their products.

But a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million just on its first set of claims against HTC.

Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.

Apple brought the case against HTC with the International Trade Commission in February, 2010. Apple wanted the ITC to block HTC from importing products into the United States.

Apple’s case against HTC started out with 84 claims based on 10 patents. But by the time the case got to a judge only four patents were involved.

The final ruling was that one patent was totally invalid because of prior art, and should never have been issued to Apple. On two other patents, the ruling was that HTC was not infringing on the patents, and, worse yet, that Apple itself was not using those patents in its own product, which means Apple had no right to seek an injunction based on them. (ITC injunctions are intended to protect “domestic industry,” and to get one you need to show that you are “practicing” the patent that you claim someone else is infringing.)

On the last patent the ITC found that HTC was infringing and that Apple was practicing the patent.

That got reported as a victory for Apple. But in reality the infringement involved a relatively tiny software feature, one that lets you press on a phone number in an email or Web page and bring up a menu from which you can choose to call the number, send a text message, and so on.

HTC can resolve the infringement simply be removing that feature from phones it sells in the United States, or by finding a different way to implement that feature that sidesteps the patent.

So Apple started out with 10 patents — presumably its best ones — and ended up with a tiny victory on just one. Was that worth $100 million?

Apple certainly can afford the legal fees, and shows no sign of letting up.

Apple has a second complaint against HTC pending at the ITC, involving other patents, with a ruling expected by March 2013. Both of these cases, the one that’s been ruled on and the one that is pending, have also been filed with district courts in the U.S., though those cases have been stayed pending the outcome of the ITC cases.

HTC has two claims pending against Apple with the ITC as well, the first one due for a decision next month and the second in April 2013. And then there are other claims, all over the world, against HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

But all of those guys are now suing Apple as well. Apple already got its ass kicked by Nokia and had to pay royalties for infringing on Nokia patents.

Eventually everyone is going to settle. (Steve Jobs may have wanted to drive Android out of existence, but that’s probably not going to happen.) The question is what kind of terms will everyone get in these settlements. The court fights are really just a way of jockeying for position and trying to gain leverage for the great settlement that is yet to come.

In that sense, whatever Apple is spending on legal fees is probably money well spent.

Was anyone else horrified by that amazing article in the New York Times explaining why Apple builds products in China instead of the United States? How do we justify buying products from factories where people are treated in ways that we would never allow ourselves or our countrymen to be treated? As one former Apple executive says, “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?” Yeah. We can’t do that. What’s more stunning is that some people seem to see this as a failing on our part. My longer reaction to that article just went up on the Daily Beast this morning.

So far Apple’s legal “thermonuclear war” against Android phone makers isn’t going so well, as I point out in this week’s Newsweek. “Nearly two years after the first salvos were fired, Apple’s war on Android has accomplished almost nothing. And it’s starting to look as if Apple’s patent portfolio isn’t nearly as lethal as Jobs seemed to think.”

HT to Andrew Sullivan.

Here’s my new business plan: I will get Google, Samsung, HTC and Motorola to fund my Android blog. I know it seems like a glaring conflict of interest, but is it really? I mean, really? Okay, it really is a conflict of interest. It really, really is. It’s disgusting, actually. But you know what? It sure beats trying to make money by selling ads. These days the cool kids in the Valley hackery have moved beyond mere “journalism” and instead are all about finding ways to “monetize influence.” That seems to be the strategy for Sarah Lacy’s new blog, PandoDaily, a publication funded by the very same VCs whose startups she aims to “cover.” From now on, if you’re a startup company, you won’t need to go hire PR people to go pitch those nasty hacks — because your investors will just get you covered by that sexy blog that they also happen to own. And if some other nasty publication starts writing critical things about you, well, your VCs have a pal in their pocket who can bash away on your behalf. This all makes perfect sense.

Seriously, if anyone reading this knows Andy Rubin, call me up. Half million each is nothing for Google, Samsung, HTC and Motorola, and a very small price to pay to have an influential friend in the press. Look at it like a kind of insurance. Or a protection racket, as I believe it is called in some quarters. Pay up, and you get “most favored nation” status on our blog. Nothing icky about that, am I right? Next up: The Windows Phone blog, funded by Microsoft and its hardware partners. After that? Every vertical you can possibly imagine, funded by the main companies in those verticals. Potential investors, please get in touch. My email address is posted here.

BTW, if you think this is not what every investor in PanderDaily (and CrunchFund, for that matter) was thinking when they wrote their checks, I have some very nice real estate in Florida that I’d like to talk to you about. Or, better yet, a new blog. Huge returns, guaranteed! Because everyone knows blogs are huge money makers. Why else would all the hot VCs in the Valley be investing in one?

Much is being made of the fact that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has called upon the FTC to investigate Google for tying its Google+ social network to its search results.

Some of the more excitable members of the hackery seem to have leapt to the conclusion that if EPIC writes a letter then inevitably an FTC investigation will follow. From the hysterical tone of some articles, you’d think the government has already filed a lawsuit, and that Google had already been found guilty.

But one letter from EPIC does not an antitrust case make. For one thing, EPIC’s director, Marc Rotenberg, has long had an erection for Google — he hates Google even more than MG Siegler, and that’s saying something.

What you also might not know is that Rotenberg has a long history of bitching about tech companies invading privacy, and that one of his most curious crusades was against Caler ID. Rotenberg’s argument was that before Caller ID, you were the one who controlled whether to give out your number, but with Caller ID the phone companies had taken that control away from you.

EPIC’s Web site has a page devoted to Caller ID. Here is an article from the LA Times from 1990 where Rotenberg discusses the scourge that is Caller ID. And here’s one from the New York Times in 1995.

Funny thing is, I learned about this from Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s communications guy, in 2010 when Rotenberg was going after Facebook for pushing its members to share more info about themselves. Schrage was trying to make a point about Rotenberg being the kind of guy who freaks out over new technology.

Now, of course, Rotenberg is going after Google, and (kind of) carrying water for Facebook. My sense is Schrage and his team might have a higher opinion of Rotenberg now than they did last year.

Seriously, this is outrageous. I ordered a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and it just arrived today. Here’s a photo of the box next to the box for the iPhone 4S that I got a couple months ago. Can you tell which one is which? I know I can’t. (I’ll just tell you. It’s the one on the right.)

Things only get worse when you open them up. Look at this shit. Samsung, have you no shame? How do these people keep getting away with this crap?

It’s a theory anyway, laid out in an article I just did about Google’s “Search plus Your World” on The Daily Beast.

Check out the video below or view it on flickr. It’s from CES in Las Vegas. A guy from Samsung is showing off a window display that turns a glass window into a computer display. With the touch of a finger you can flip the “blinds” open and shut, change the color of the blinds, pull up marketing reports, play video and so on. It’s pretty amazing stuff, and may be related to a breakthrough that Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology announced last October which involves “single crystalline Gallium Nitride on amorphous glass substrates.” Samsung has been tinkering with this idea for a while and showed off something sort of similar back in 2008 and showed more transparent display stuff in November 2010.

Now — view the video on flickr, and then look down in the comments. Do you know what Apple nuts are bitching about? The weather widget in the Samsung window display bears a striking resemblance to the weather widget on a Mac. “Shameless!” someone huffs and puffs. The video got picked up on Twitter by Radar Design, and then picked up by John Gruber on Daring Fireball under the headline, “Another Amazing Samsung Design Coincidence.”

I’m starting to wonder if Gruber is just trying to wind people up. Because, um, it’s a weather widget, and they all kind of look like this, and while I’m sure that Apple’s little weather widget is just the most amazingly perfect weather widget out there, and no doubt Jony Ive and his team spent months and months trying to decide on just the right shade of blue for the background of the widget and agonizing over which typeface would be the ideal one for a weather widget — is this what we’ve sunk to? Seriously? What has to happen to someone’s brain that they can look at a video of a magical transparent touch screen window display and all they notice is the weather widget?

This is like someone showing off a fully functioning time machine and having Gruber sniff that, well, that start button looks an awful lot like the power button an an iMac.