Apparently Google will soon be in the hardware business. This morning the company announced a bid to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Recent information suggests that part of this move was motivated by Google's desire to acquire patents.
A post on Google's blog not only outline the deal but addressed the company's attraction to Motorola's numerous patents, grand totalling 17,000. CEO Larry Page discussed the Google's "patent portfolio" saying,
"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 concern in a deal like this is that it moves Google from just being the designer and architect of a smartphone OS (Android), to a company responsible for hardware. That means Google is essentially putting themselves into competition with the other Android partners such as Samsung, HTC, and LG. Ars Technica addressed this with Page and he indicated that other partners were on board with the deal, "There's no change in how we're running Android… our partners are very excited about this."
The deal is still up for review. Motorola shareholders will need to okay the deal and a regulatory review will also need to happen. Once the deal is final, how other partners respond to Google entering the hardware space and whether or not Android's overall market share is impacted by this move will be interesting to watch.
Regardless of the public reactions stated by the other Android hardware partners, they simply can't be happy about competing with Google on the hardware front. Google's iron grip on the Android OS gives them a clear advantage in selling handsets over the other hardware manufacturers.
