Image via CrunchBaseWorld War III Time: Let's Go To WarAndroid Has To Be Kept Free
This move means that now when Microsoft and Apple and Oracle ask handset makers to pay a fee per handset, they will be asking Google directly that fee. And that's gonna be a problem. This fight is just getting started.
Next stop for Google: buy a carrier. And get rid of the monthly payments. Phones ought be ad supported.
Microsoft might buy Nokia now, for more money than it has illegally made off of Android.
The Official Google Blog: Larry Page: Supercharging Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility
Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries...... Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. ...... We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.New York Times: Google to Buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion
The acquisition would turn Google, which makes the Android mobile operating system, into a full-fledged cellphone manufacturer, in direct competition with Apple....... “This is clearly a defensive deal, they were backed in a corner and they had to protect the Android platform.” ....... Motorola holds more than 17,000 patents. ...... The company has agreed to pay a $2.5 billion reverse termination fee, if it walks away, and Motorola will pay a $375 million break-up fee if it takes another offer ....... “We think this is a competitive transaction,” David Drummond, the company’s chief legal officer said. “This is not a horizontal transaction, Google has not materially been in the handset business.”ReadWriteWeb: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility, Android Ecosystem Shudders
Across the world, there are Android-based original equipment managers that feel like they just got punched in the stomach, as Google's entry into the hardware supply chain, no matter how benevolent the companies make it sound, is a huge wave that will have ripple affects across the entire mobile ecosystem. ..... Apple only has 18.2% of the worldwide smartphone market and Android has 43.4%. ....... Motorola, a once-proud company that dominated the mobile space in the years leading up to the Era of the Smartphone (remember the Razr?). ...... There should be more and better Android devices coming to market. ...... Google now has the capability of completing disrupting the balance of the environment in the same way that Apple has.CNet: Google just bought itself patent protection
Google dropped a bombshell on the technology industry ...... For Google the move takes the search giant away from its core competency of developing software into a new realm of becoming a hardware maker. Motorola, which has been in existence for 80 years, is one of the oldest mobile phone makers on the market. In fact, it developed the first commercial cell phone....... The company has patent portfolio that includes more than 17,000 approved patents. And it has another 7,500 patents filed and pending approval. This portfolio of patents is substantially larger than the group of patents that was sold from Nortel Networks...... the Motorola patents will help protect all Android productsRealDan: Suck on it, AppleSoft — Google pulls a rope-a-dope
Google just sandbagged its rivals. The whole thing was a rope-a-dope maneuver. Google never cared about the Nortel patents. It just wanted to drive up the price so that AppleSoft (those happy new bedmates) would overpay. Today, with the Motorola deal, Google picks up nearly three times as many patents as AppleSoft got from Novell and Nortel. More important, Google just raised the stakes in a huge way for anyone who wants to stay in the smartphone market...... So now Google fires back, makes a huge acquisition, gets into the hardware business, buys up the best IP portfolio in the mobile space — and can position itself as a victim that’s just trying to defend itself against this gang of bullies. ...... As for those crazy bids in the Nortel auction — that was just a way to leave a little “fuck you” in the paperwork for Google’s pals in Redmond and Cupertino to look back upon. That move is pure Larry Page. This is a smart, hyper-competitive guy with a mean streak and a nasty sense of humor.Business Insider: The Truth About The Google-Motorola Deal: It Could End Up Being A Disaster
a big, bold move..... Google is now competing with its partners. And hardware manufacturing is an entirely different kind of business than Google's core business. And hardware manufacturing is a crappy, low-margin commodity business. And Motorola is massive--Google has just increased the size of its company by 60%. And the deal appears to be purely a defensive move, not an offensive one. ....... Google needs to unify Android. And perhaps owning a hardware company is the only way to do that. ..... Hardware sales are a brutally competitive business, with a core competency entirely different from Google's. Hardware manufacturing and sales are about supply chains, parts, factories, physical distribution, and consumer marketing--all things that Google has little or no experience with. And Motorola itself is not exactly knocking the cover off the ball these days in all these areas...... Google just added 19,000 new employees. 19,000! Google itself only has 29,000. .... . Google just increased the size of itself by 60%--in a company in which culture is crucial. .... there's a chance that Google could pull off a miracle here and transform the Motorola Mobility business into a direct competitor of Apple's--in which Google gets not only Android distribution, but super-fat iPhone-like profit margins to boot...... Motorola's current hardware team has displayed none of the magic that Apple's has.ZDnet: Google's $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility bet: 6 reasons why it makes sense
Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility solves the search giant’s patent problems, gives it a bigger say in hardware integration and fixes a few other issues. ..... overall the deal is just crazy enough to work. ...... Page is betting on mobility as the future of computing ..... The larger question is whether the vertically integrated model is the only one that works in the wireless industry. ..... Google will get significant relationships with cable providers and give Android more of a foothold. ...... Motorola was thinking about suing other Android hardware makers over patents. Google’s acquisition would put an end to that. ....... With the Google-Motorola deal, Page is basically acknowledging that there’s no money in third party operating systems in the mobile space. The upshot: Mobile software players need a hardware component. As a result, Microsoft may be forced to acquire a hardware player. Research in Motion and Nokia are prime takeover candidates. In any case, Microsoft will be distracted by a big acquisition....... Google is indicating that the wireless market is a two platform race. And those two horses are going to be Android and iOS.
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