Google buys Motorola

Google announced yesterday its intention to purchase Motorola Mobility, the part of Motorola that sells cell phones such as the Droid and tablets such as the Xoom.  Assuming that the deal goes through,  Google will make both the Android operating system and some of the leading phones and tablets that use that operating system.  In other words, just like Apple with its iPhone and iPad, Google will make the whole product, software and hardware, even though Google will also continue to license Android software to other hardware manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung.

Reports indicate that the primary reason that Google purchased Motorola was patents.  Google wanted all of the Motorola patents to defend patent claims against Android by companies such as Apple and Microsoft.  Indeed, Om Malik reports that the primary reason that Google bought Motorola is that Microsoft was also trying to buy Motorola just to get the patents.

[UPDATE:  For an excellent analysis of why Google was forced to buy Motorola, read this report by Horace Dediu in the Harvard Business Review.]

But even if Google was ultimately pressured into buying Motorola just so that nobody else would get those patents, the fact remains that Google now has the opportunity to create every part of an Android phone, both the software and the hardware.  This might not be good news for the other companies making Android phones, but if Google does a good job, it creates the possibility that we will see some really great phones in the future from, um, Googorola, or Moto-ogle, or something like that.  As Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times explained, most of the time when you purchase an Android phone, you find it loaded with all sorts of useless apps that you don’t want and can’t remove just because another company paid to have them included — “crapware” that those of us who use the iPhone never have to see.  Now we have the opportunity to see a lot of new mobile phones that present the pure Google experience.  And Motorola’s engineers certainly know a thing or two about phones.  I remember the days when all of the cool attorneys were using a Motorola StarTAC, the first flip phone.

The smartphone market is a huge market, and there is a lot of room for Apple to sell tons of iPhones while other companies also sell tons of other smartphones.  My hope is always that the iPhone’s competition remains of high quality so that Apple is encouraged to continue its innovation and bring us even better iPhones.  Google’s purchase of Motorola may have had its roots in patent disputes, but my hope is that one of the side benefits is that we see Google-Motorola designing and manufacturing some really great Android smartphones in the future.