Google just dropped a bomb tonight – the gigantic search giant/mobile OS maker/future masters of the world has announced it has acquired Motorola Mobility, the arm responsible for creating the Droid series of smartphones and the Xoom for $12.5 billion. In a blog post at the official Google blog, CEO Larry Page stated that “Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.” Additionally, he says that “this acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform,” and that “we (Google) will run Motorola as a separate business.” That’s not the only reason why Google acquired Motorola though. It’s probably safe to say at this point that Larry sees Motorola as insurance against the patent bruhaha that Google believes is being instigated on them by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and others. “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,” the Google CEO said.
Via: Tech Crunch
Source: Google Blog