{"id":62,"date":"2011-08-15T22:24:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-15T22:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2020-08-07T03:24:51","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T03:24:51","slug":"mot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/2011\/08\/15\/mot\/","title":{"rendered":"I Guess Motorola was Negotiating Last Week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week has started with a bang:\u00a0Google is acquiring Motorola Mobility<\/a>\u00a0for much more than a\u00a0sarcastic math constant<\/a>. Larry Page says this is largely a defensive move to acquire Motorola\u2019s patent portfolio, so I presume David Drummond\u2019s team did the appropriate diligence to confirm the patents\u00a0are\u00a0not \u201cbogus\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macworld\u2019s Dan Moren makes\u00a0a good, sad point<\/a>: we are in the middle of a cynical IP arms race that doesn\u2019t appear to be slowing down. Over at The New Yorker, Nicholas Thompson\u00a0laments<\/a>\u00a0the depressing irony of this move: just twelve days after fairly lamenting patent warfare as stifling, Google has forcefully decided a once-free company\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patent harassment lawsuits between Apple, Microsoft, Google, and the Android OEMs won\u2019t stop, but Google is at least less likely to lose now. It\u2019ll likely end as it always does: with cross-licensing cease-fires, which may or may not trickle down to Google\u2019s partners. Nilay Patel has\u00a0a quick summary<\/a>\u00a0of the short-term legal fallout. He concludes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026it\u2019s still curious why Google spent the full $12.5b on Motorola, instead of a smaller amount acquiring the rights to Moto\u2019s patents \u2014 or the rights to litigate with those patents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I think that\u2019s pretty simple: Motorola is already a leading Android OEM and has little to gain from a mere licensing deal. It could certainly use the cash \u2014 the last three fiscal years have ended with net losses \u2014 but I think the executive team saw an opportunity to really alter the company\u2019s future and played hardball.\u00a0In that light, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha\u2019s recent public comments become much more interesting. In a two-day span last week, Jha said that he was\u00a0interested in building Windows Phone 7 hardware<\/a>, and that they may start\u00a0flexing their IP against fellow Android OEMs<\/a>. It\u2019s now obvious that these were warning shots to Google during negotiations. Given the ludicrous price Google paid, I\u2019d say it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think there\u2019s more, though. Florian Mueller\u00a0tweets<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google\u2019s original strategy for Android resulted in huge and fast-growing activation numbers. But something must have been missing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A lot is missing, not the least of which is a stable platform. OS and app fragmentation will only get worse as more Android devices pop up. Google can solve this problem in a few ways, assuming the MMI acquisition goes through:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Choke the OEMs out of business with unified, best-of-breed Motorola devices.<\/li>
  2. Make it easier for Android developers to write multi-device native apps.<\/li>
  3. Make the browser a true first-class unifying platform on Android.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    OEMs should definitely be afraid of option 1, but ad sales are still Google\u2019s\u00a0core business. Eyeballs are all that matter there, so momentum through a diverse flood of devices will continue to be Android\u2019s goal for some time. But there\u2019s little doubt that Motorola will be the preferred Android OEM moving forward, just as there\u2019s little doubt that Nokia will be\u00a0the preferred Windows Phone 7 OEM<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I don\u2019t believe Google will solve the fragmentation problem at the native level; it\u2019s just not in their self-styled DNA to apply the necessary focus or constraints, especially while growth is a priority. But I am willing to believe Google will try\u00a0to solve the fragmentation problem with a rich web framework. And this is the point where we recall that Motorola\u00a0acquired 280 North<\/a>\u00a0almost exactly one year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    280 North makes a framework called Cappuccino that allows you to write rich web applications using Objective-C syntax. (Objective-C is the language used to write native Mac and iOS applications.) The technology has produced\u00a0some beautiful work<\/a>, and could help Google woo iOS developers to Android with much less pain than\u00a0they\u2019re<\/a>\u00a0accustomed<\/a>\u00a0to<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0We haven\u2019t heard a whole lot since Motorola bought them, but I have to believe Google is interested in this technology. It\u2019s produced some compelling work, I don\u2019t believe it was a factor in the acquisition deal, but I do think Cappuccino has a future at Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Motorola has had problems for years, and Google is not a hardware company. Time will tell whether this marriage will actually work. For the time being, the winners are Motorola\u2019s shareholders, and its executive team, who pulled off a hell of a deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (UPDATE: Florian Mueller has observed an unusually large $2.5B \u201cbreakup\u201d fee for Motorola if the deal falls through. It really looks like Motorola got its way here.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This week has started with a bang:\u00a0Google is acquiring Motorola Mobility\u00a0for much more than a\u00a0sarcastic math constant. Larry Page says this is largely a defensive move to acquire Motorola\u2019s patent portfolio, so I presume David Drummond\u2019s team did the appropriate diligence to confirm the patents\u00a0are\u00a0not \u201cbogus\u201d. Macworld\u2019s Dan Moren makes\u00a0a good, sad point: we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}