Google to acquire Motorola Mobility

Elimentals said:
I dont think Google had much choice in the matter. With the onslaught of patent claims hitting the Android OS from Microsoft and Apple it forced their hand. Add to that the fact that Sanjay Jha in his speech on 9 August hinted in his Oppenheimer conference keynote that they are planing to sue other Android OEM's, the OHA had to make a plan.

Google did mention that Motorola will stay a separate entity, so this all points to patents. Also seeing that all the other OEM's from the OHA welcomed the deal milliseconds after it was made public makes me think this was a pre approved by them as well.
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I had the same take on this sory. It is all about the patents.
 
Cringely's latest column/post on this was pretty interesting. [http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/motogoogle/]

Outside of the points raised about Google Voice (not that relevant outside US yet), the most interesting was Motorola's Java license. By acquiring Motorola Google kills two birds with one stone, as it were. They would have enough ammo to ward off not only Apple, but Oracle as well.

Cringely also wonders out loud whether Google didn't have this idea from the start which "might well explain Google’s goofy bidding behavior during the recent Nortel patent auction." (IIRC Google bid in mathematical constants until they reached the 4-odd billion mark and stopped, their 3 billion bid was $3.14159... billion for instance)

I wonder whether Google wasn't waiting for an opportunity exactly like this: Wait for a major competitor (in this case 3) to put in bids for a bunch of patents then buy Motorola. This way it may be less likely the deals will be seen as anti-competitive.
 
1st Motorola purchase now this http://android-developers.blogspot....Feed:+blogspot/hsDu+(Android+Developers+Blog)

At Google I/O, we announced that Android Market is coming to Google TV. Today, we’re announcing a preview of the Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK. With the upcoming OS update to Honeycomb, Google TV devices will be Android compatible. That means developers can build great new Android apps for TV, optimize existing mobile or tablet apps for TV, and distribute those apps through Android Market.

While the add-on does not contain all features of Google TV, it enables developers to emulate Google TV and build apps using standard Android SDK tools. It also provides new APIs for TV interaction, such as TV channel line-up. Google TV emulation is currently supported on Linux with KVM only, and we are working on support for other operating systems. We’re very happy that through KVM we’ve been able to create a fast Android emulator for TV.

Depending on the design and use case, an existing Android app may work well on Google TV as is, or it may require fixes. With the add-on you can test your apps to determine if they would be a good fit for TV and whether any tweaks are required. We are also publishing UI guidelines to help you with topics like optimizing for D-pad navigation, presenting information for 10-foot viewing, designing apps that work well across devices, etc. The guidelines include information on how certain UI elements on Google TV differ from other Android devices.

As with other devices, apps that require features not supported on Google TV won’t appear in Android Market on Google TV. For example, Google TV-based devices do not have a touchscreen; hence apps which require touchscreen will not appear. Conversely, if the manifest says touchscreen is not required, the app will appear. Please follow our guidelines carefully.

These are still early days for Google TV, and this release is another step in providing developer tools for the big screen. While the number of apps available on TV will initially be small, we expect that through this early release of the add-on you'll be able to bring optimized TV apps into the ecosystem more quickly. To start doing this, download the Google TV add-on today. Also, please continue to reach out to us on the Google TV Android Developer Community forum. We look forward to your contributions!
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Google's next target.... Your TV

As magicians always say... watch my hand..... (not the one behind my back)
 
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Now here's a thing: It seems Google is getting all the crap patents.

According to David Martin, the founder and chairman of patent consulting firm M-Cam, Google got only "crap patents" when it announced its intention to purchase Motorola Mobility last month. And why is that? Because Motorola had already sold off its best patents, along with its other most valuable assets, long before splitting into two companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.

"It's an immense mistake," Martin says in an interview on Bloomberg, referring to Google's blockbuster $12.5 billion patent acquisition of Motorola Mobility. "What they've bought is crap. Motorola [had already] sold off its good assets. Back in the early years, Motorola sold off some MPEG patents to GE ... After that, they took a bunch of the Freescale patents and sold those off. [Motorola's current patent estate, which Google is trying to buy,] actually has a huge dependency on Freescale, and Freescale actually has an Apple link."

"So you have this very interesting strategy where Google thought through the present," Martin continues, "but didn't actually do its homework on the patents."

When asked if Google was in fact acquiring a patent liability and thus was more likely to be sued by other patent holders, Martin replies, "No question. The target [Google has] painted on themselves is immense. It is so easy to find. Going back to 1997, which predates Google's first patent issue, which was in 1999, Arthur Andersen actually filed a bunch of patents on Google technology. Google started filing in 1999. And out of the 700+ patents [Google] has filed under its own name, an enormous amount of that [patent] estate is actually challenged by the likes of these improbable players, many of which aren't even around anymore" [including Arthur Andersen, which was linked to the Enron fiasco].

So there you go. I figured this was a lousy deal to begin with. Now it looks even dumber.
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Also see this report by Matt Rosoff ofBusiness Insider.
 
Arthur said:
Now here's a thing: It seems Google is getting all the crap patents.



Also see this report by Matt Rosoff ofBusiness Insider.
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I dont think any company in the world would pay out $12.5 billion without knowing exactly what they are buying.

Personally I think old David Martin is just trying to get the name out of his patent consulting firm, or just ticked off that Google didn't use his no name company to audit the deal.
 
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