In response, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel tweeted, "Google says we bought NOVELL patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no."
That's mentioned in the article and has been posted several times. Even that tweet doesn't imply that Google actively vied for the patents, though, in my opinion, that's a pretty fair assumption.
This thread features a wider breadth of discussion about that particular tweet, in case you or anyone else might have missed it: https://hackernews.hn/item?id=2844722
