Google has announced that they are purchasing the mobility branch of Motorola, one of the world's biggest phone manufacturers and one of the big figures in the Android platform. For 12.5 billion dollars, Motorola Mobility will become part of the ever-growing Google family, while Motorola itself will continue to exist separately.

The reasons for this purchase are clear: Google wants to have more control over the direction of its platform, and what better way to do so than to start making first-party devices with all of your features in mind? In addition, Google was recently shafted out of a joint patent bid by a consortium of companies including Microsoft, Apple, and RIM, for all of the patents held by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel. Motorola has an extensive lineup of patents themselves, which Google will acquire in this deal and use to strengthen their patent portfolio.

While this may seem like a good thing to some people, it sparks a lot of concern as well. Google is rapidly expanding every day, and is now one of the giants of the tech world. If you love Google, that's not a bad thing, but for everyone else, Google may be growing too big for comfort. In addition, this acquisition of Motorola Mobility could have a negative influence on the "openness" of Android. And worse yet, if Google is entering direct phone production, they are in direct competition with other manufacturers that use Google's own Android platform, such as HTC and Samsung. There is no way to prevent Google from leveraging their OS against their new competition in order to guarantee higher phone sales for themselves.

So, you Google fans and conspiracy theorists out there, what are your thoughts on this deal? Is this a good or bad thing for Android? Do competitors like Apple and Microsoft have anything to fear from this? And how much bigger could Google possibly get?

Articles:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/google-to-buy-motorola-in-effort-to-defend-itself-from-patent-bullies.ars
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219191/CEO_Larry_Page_blogs_on_why_Google_s_buying_Motorola_Mobility?taxonomyId=75
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20092473-264/google-takes-bold-action-to-match-aspirations/
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/motorola-mobility-deal-googles-125-billion-motorola-mobility-buy-may-worry-partners/articleshow/9615567.cms
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/08/google-guns-for-apple-with-motorola-/1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/why-the-google---motorola-deal-make-senseand-why-it-doesnt/2011/08/15/gIQAxb0IHJ_blog.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/15/google-buys-motorola-mobility
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/08/15/google-buys-motorola-mobility-for-12-5b-revs-up-patent-portfolio/
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110815-708280.html
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/15/google-to-buy-motorola-mobility.aspx

Google doesn't care so much about control over the Android market, but did it solely for the patents. Who gets to make the Nexus phones is still decided by the highest bidder, Android stays "completely" open, etc.


While Google is buying Motorola, Motorola will stay a separate company (this is because Google has no interest in getting into the phone-making business, but just wants access to Motrola's patents in a more-than cross-patent agreement)

This move has three reasons:

1. To hold the patents against Microsoft to keep them from getting royalties from android phone makers

2. To hold the patents against Apple to stop them from keeping Android devices out of the market

3. To keep Motorola from suing other Android makers (which the CEO of Motorola recently hinted at)

Like I said, Google has no interest in becoming a phone maker, it just wanted full control of Motorola's patents. This is why Motorola will stay independent.

Also, funny that you link to pretty much everything except Google's own release:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html
http://investor.google.com/releases/2011/0815.html