Google announced its biggest acquisition so far at a cost of 12.5 billion dollars, the Motorola Mobility group.
This is huge, and will definitely reshape the Android world. Motorola has been producing very successful smartphones like the Motorola Droid and tablets such as the Motorola Xoom under Google’s Android OS. With this acquisition, Google is setting foot at the hardware level of devices running its OS.
As an open source OS, this is a bit odd, as Google becomes a direct competitor to Samsung and HTC for example. But Google CEO Larry Page is making himself reassuring with the following statement,
This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.
Google’s acquisition of Motorola comes with Motorola’s port-folio patent that should contribute to protect Android. In recent months, Apple and Microsoft have been suing the Android manufacturers for patent infringement. Apple has even been able to ban Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Europe just last week. Android manufacturers are very excited about this transaction, as it shows support from Google to defend its Android OS. To this day, Google has never been directly sued, but Samsung and HTC have had to pay the price to Microsoft for using the Android OS.
All in all, this is a very smart and strategic move by Google. I hope that with the new patents from Motorola, we should see a halt in the recent lawsuit war that’s been going on with Apple and Microsoft.
[Via Google Blog]
