Why Google Bought Motorola

Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire the maker of smartphones Motorola Mobility $ 12.5 billion.

In a statement, Google said the deal was largely motivated by the need to acquire the patent portfolio of Motorola, which said it would help defend against legal threats from armed Android competitors with their own patents. This problem has been at the forefront of a consortium of companies led by technology from Apple and Microsoft have bought more than 6,000 mobile devices and patents related to Nortel Networks for about $ 4.5 million in early July. The battle lines are drawn around the patents, as companies try to protect their interests in the competitive mobile industry through litigation and innovation.

However, as more people use the Internet to mobile devices, the acquisition could also help Google continue to key in their web experience in the coming years. As Apple has demonstrated its popular iPhone, this is much easier to achieve if the company can control the hardware and software, people carry in their pockets. Observations made by Google executives hint that Motorola could also play a role in shaping the future of the Web in other areas, for example, set-top boxes.

Motorola is more important in the acquisition by Google, and it takes the company into new territories uncertain. The agreement could also attract a competency exam is due to the scope and Google with Android, that runs on about half of all smartphones in the U.S..

Motorola, which makes Droid smartphone, went all-in with the Android platform Google in 2008 and stated that all units would use the operating system open source for mobile phones.

Before he left, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt had begun to press Google employees to divert their attention to mobile. Co-founder and new CEO, Larry Page seems determined to maintain this shift. At a conference this morning, he told investors: "It's no secret that Web use is increasingly shifting to mobile devices, a trend I expect to continue. As mobility continues to take heart in the information revolution is the combination of Motorola's a very important event in the further development of Google that will lead to many improvements in our ability to deliver a good user experience, the experience. "

Motorola engineers have greatly changed the Google Android platform-based appliances. For example, the company designed Motoblur, a user interface that includes Twitter, Facebook and other social sites into a single stream of data, and this was a major selling point for the mobile business.