Earlier today, Google revealed that it has agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. In the announcement, Google states that it hopes Motorola "will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere."
However, we all know that there's something behind the scenes that Google hopes Motorola will help it out with: patents. Google recently sounded off at Apple, Microsoft, and others, claiming that these companies acquired many patents for anti-competitive reasons against Android and Google. Google believes that these companies are using patents to develop a campaign that would make it more difficult for manufacturers to develop Android phones.
Motorola Mobility owns over 17,000 patents (with an additional 7,000 pending approval), meaning Google will have access to these technologies and ideas with no legal trouble afterwards. Google can (maybe) finally stop complaining about how it doesn't own as many patents now. These patents will not only allow Android to grow, but also will Google ease of mind that no legal trouble will come.
In addition, this deal changes everything with manufacturing Android devices. Previously, Google gave out Android OS to companies like HTC, Samsung, LG, etc. Google was also using some of these companies as manufacturers for its Nexus lineup of smartphones. Now, Google has a manufacturer in-house, meaning that these other companies will have one more market to compete with Google - manufacturing. This deal allows Google to use Motorola Mobility as the manufacturer for the next Nexus smartphone and not rely as heavily on others.
Finally, Google will be able to inform Motorola Mobility about upcoming versions of Android OS well before others know about it. This means Google can launch more exclusive devices with Motorola and have updates kept more secret for a longer period of time.
What do you think was Google's main reason for acquiring Motorola Mobility?
