Googorola, One Week Later
After our initial coverage (and the rest of the world’s) of Google’s surprise bid to acquire Motorola’s Mobility Group, we took a deeper look. Below is an excerpt and you can read the rest here.
We’re about a week into the news and opinion cycle following Google’s bid to acquire Motorola’s Mobility group for $12.5 billion in cash. But lots of coverage has missed the point.
Moto’s patent portfolio has been one area of focus, and rightly so. Intellectual property has been a key area of competition lately among mobile platforms and that alone makes this a smart pickup for Google.
But there’s also speculation about what this will mean for the Android ecosystem, and competing hardware manufacturers that have built quite a bit of value around the platform. These include Samsung, HTC, and Motorola itself (i.e. Droid).
Google has claimed it will keep the platform open though it’s now somewhat conflicted, having an ODM horse in the race. This is where coverage has strayed into irrelevant territory — seeing the acquisition as a way to own a piece of the device hardware market.
That’s really the last thing Google cares about. I believe the company when it says it will keep Android open and agnostic for other (competing) device manufacturers to continue building and growing their own market share on its back.
That may sound crazy but here’s why it’s true:
