Google acquires Motorola

Out of nowhere, Google announced this morning that they are buying a majority in Motorola.

Is this the end of Motoblur? Apparently hell did freeze over last night. I might actually buy another Moto product now.

The obvious reason for this is so that Google can now take an active role in the "defense" of the Android ecosystem on the legal front.

 

According to Forbes, this was really all about acquiring patents that were currently held by Motorola.

Forbes

This should shelter them somewhat from the MS and Apple patent sharks.

 

Yeah that was the main point of it.

But from a user standpoint this is great news. Moto has always made pretty good products, but they have a draconian bootloader policy and their custom UI "Motoblur" is universally hated by almost everyone. This acquisition will make both of those things go away. The Nexus One is one of the best Android phones ever made. The Droid is the other one. Both of them were vanilla Android phones.

I feel like singing "ding song the witch is dead". Even if this doesnt help with the Apple battle at all, it is great news for those two reasons alone.

 

Agreed. I'm a huge fan of both Motorola handheld products and the Android O/S. It will help with patent issues, but Apple is always going to have fanboys in the market that seem to enjoy overpaying for the logo... but I'm not sure there's anything Google can do about that.

 

i was siting here trying to figure out why this is so familar then i remeber Micrsoft bough Nokia.

Motorola has been peddeling alot of driod lately, seems like a match.

 

Motorola Mobility is a subsidiary of Motorola.

 

For entirely different reasons.

This is the grown ups (Google) coming in to handle business because the kids (Samsung/Motorola/HTC) cant get it together. Google needs a platform to take direct action and a patent library to beat Apple over the head with. Motorola can do both.

Microsoft was more of an actual strategic alliance with Nokia. And their model is very similar to Apple's where they need control over the hardware. Android has been fantastically successful without that already. There is not reason to believe Google wants to do that.

They are only buying the "Mobility" part. But that encompasses all of the mobile-related patents from what I understand.

 

Google has already said they aren't going to hand the next Nexus over to Motorola, and that they'll be required to compete like everyone else. Basically the management and structure at Motorola Mobility won't be changing. They'll still be selling basically the same products produced by basically the same teams. There's no way that Google could successfully integrate a subsidiary as large and as fundamentally different as Motorola Mobility in anything like a close time frame. Maybe in 8-10 years.

 

I think they pretty much have to kill Motoblur though. Otherwise the competition could point to it and say "if Android is so great, why does google need a custom UI on its own phones?"

On a purely selfish level, that is what I really want to see die. The Motoblur UI.

 

To which Google can reply "that's the advantage of Android--we don't make your decisions for you, and we give you a product flexible enough to do anything you want. That's the power of open technologies."

Sure, we all know that the open technologies line is bull(*)(*)(*)(*), but that's still as valid a response as the original complaint would be.

 

Yeah, but that is Google's own product. Why would they not just make the Android UI like they want it? What would be the reason for a custom UI on their own phones?

 

Google would be releasing phones with different UIs. Motorola probably won't be making the next Nexus, for example. Why would they keep them separate? To maintain market identity. To preserve a brand they spent good money to buy. To showcase how flexible their platform is. There's any number of reasons. There's also strategic reasons for it. As others have noted, Google can't seem like they're threatening to eat their distributors. Google is, even after this sale, dependent on a whole host of other low-margin hardware companies to produce hardware using Android. Unless Google intends to scare them off and cannibalize their market (and thereby pursue the same strategy Apple and Microsoft are), they're going to have to make it seem like this merger hasn't changed Motorola Mobility.

 

Motorola owns that nationwide instant talk-thingee... that's pretty big.

 

A few choice quotes today:

Sources - http://www.slashgear.com/htc-sony-ericsson-and-lg-praise-googles-17k-motorola-patent-grab-15171695/ - and - http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/15/googl...-behind-motorola-acquisition-spoiler-patents/ -

 

What are they supposed to say?

 

Especially after they invested so much money on google's android platform... Do anybody here think they would diss google who is their sole provider of the software?

And people used to complain about microsoft... They've seen nothing yet with «do no evil» google...

 

Google possibly paints itself into a legal corner...

With Motorola acquisition, Google makes itself a legal target
August 16, 2011, Summary: The Google-Motorola deal may make perfect sense from an Android perspective. But with antitrust hearings looming, Google may have just painted itself a legal bullseye.

 

So basically, no matter what they actually say you are going to believe what you want? LOL

What would Google do if they said they were pissed off? Refuse to provide their open source software for them? Gimme a break.

Google isnt the one trying to sue their competition out of existence.

LOL, bring it.

 

[10 character]

 

More like "why believe obvious PR-speak?"

A fully open source version of Android can barely make a phone call, much less any of the things people have come to expect from Android phones. What could Google do to them? Cut them off from the android market, and from all google services. That's going to be an even bigger deal soon when Google starts introducing cloud services and music distribution. All of that is part of the proprietary "google experience".

Why would they? They've already got a chokehold on the handset manufacturers. Google tells them to bend over and take it and there's absolutely nothing the handset manufacturers can do about it except complain to the FTC.

 

What exactly are they bending over and taking? What has Google actually done that has hurt them?

 

That appears to be a tacit admission that Google hasnt actually done anything yet. But that doesnt stop you from drawing conclusions about what they "will" do. Despite the fact that they havnt actually done it.

 

They've done plenty already but your fanboism is blinding you.

 

If they've done plenty, then you should not have any problems finding examples.

 

S&P downgrades google on acquisition news.

http://www.examiner.com/technology-...rom-buy-to-sell-lowers-price-target-200-share