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Google Android Businesses Cellphones Handhelds The Almighty Buck

Google's Motorola Adventure: Stinging Defeat, Or Semi-Victory? 139

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google had previously sold Motorola's Home division for $2.4 billion. Combine that with yesterday's $2.91 billion sale of Motorola's remaining assets, subtract the $12.5 billion acquisition price for the company back in 2011, and Google's little smartphone adventure cost it roughly $7.1 billion even before you start throwing in expenses related to actual production, marketing, and personnel. That's a hefty chunk of change, but some analysts think the deal was ultimately a good one because it allowed Google to pick up patents, engineering talent, and insight into the mobile-device marketplace. It's debatable, however, whether those patents ultimately helped Android in the still-raging smartphone wars, and Google was slow to promote Motorola smartphones out of fear of irritating other Android manufacturers. At least Google can console itself with the thought that so many of its other acquisitions—including YouTube and DoubleClick—resulted in massive profits; but you can't hit a home run every time you step up to bat."
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Google's Motorola Adventure: Stinging Defeat, Or Semi-Victory?

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  • Pee-Wee Herman (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 )

    "I meant to do that!"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      "I meant to do that!"

      Indeed. Yet another Google acquisition messed up, then tossed aside.

      It might have made Google stronger, but that's not the way to make the economy stronger. It's far closer to corporate raiding than any kind of improvement to America.

  • The numbers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GeLeTo ( 527660 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:08PM (#46110873)
    - $3.2B Moto's 2011 cash
    - $2.4B Moto's 2011 deferred tax assets
    - $2.35B Moto's Set-top-box business sold in 2012
    - $75M Moto's factories business sold in 2013
    - $2.91B Moto's Mobility business sold in 2014

    So the "patents, engineering talent, and insight into the mobile-device marketplace" cost $1.56B, not $7.1B
    • by ConallB ( 876297 )

      - $3.2B Moto's 2011 cash

      - $2.4B Moto's 2011 deferred tax assets

      - $2.35B Moto's Set-top-box business sold in 2012

      - $75M Moto's factories business sold in 2013

      - $2.91B Moto's Mobility business sold in 2014

      So the "patents, engineering talent, and insight into the mobile-device marketplace" cost $1.56B, not $7.1B

      Don't forget :

      $??? Perpetual licensing agreement to Motorola Patent Portfolio

      That's got to be worth a fair chunk of change too.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        and someone somwhere wrote that Google value the patents at 5.5B

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Every single time Google has used a Motorola patent in court, it has lost miserably.

        • It is important also that these patents are not being used against Google and their partners in court threatening to. Rockstar would love to have them.
    • Re:The numbers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:28PM (#46111125)
      You should also include the ~$1B loss that Google incurred as operating expenses while owning the company. It's still worth taking a loss on the sale in my opinion and that patents that they acquired may well be worth even more than the loss. Motorola was going to continue bleeding money and placed Google in an uncomfortable position with the other hardware manufacturers.
      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        You should also include the ~$1B loss that Google incurred as operating expenses while owning the company. It's still worth taking a loss on the sale in my opinion and that patents that they acquired may well be worth even more than the loss. Motorola was going to continue bleeding money and placed Google in an uncomfortable position with the other hardware manufacturers.

        If that's true, then it's a shrewd move by Google.

        People forget that the primary goal of the Motorola acquisition was to keep very valuable patents out of the hands of patent trolls like Apple and Microsoft. So by heading off very expensive law suits, they'll stop even more significant losses.

    • Re:The numbers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AlphaWolf_HK ( 692722 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:29PM (#46111141)

      That might be well worth it though. Take a few things into consideration here:

      - Of all people, they sold it to Lenovo, who has been rather disruptive in the PC making industry; not an easy thing to do even when they first started. Remember, they took the hardware division from IBM that was doing so-so at best, crappy at worst.
      - Lenovo wanted to get into the mobile business before buying Moto. If I were to guess, they came to Google on this one rather than Google coming to them (there wasn't any rumors of "motorola for sale" that I recall...maybe I'm wrong here.)
      - Lenovo going into the mobile business with Android is a VERY GOOD THING for Google and Android in general. Think about it: The more OEM's you have pushing Android, the better, especially if they can take some of the market share away from Samsung, which I think they are probably the most well positioned OEM to do so.

      • by Old97 ( 1341297 )
        Lenovo was already in the mobile business. They've been out competing Samsung at the low end of the market. What they needed was better products at the mid to high range. Motorola's newer phones looked good, but the marketing wasn't working. We'll see if Lenovo can do better.
      • Lenovo is making a play to keep enterprise business, and choke Dell and HP off to consumer space only. Lenovo has some incredible services that come along with a contract to buy their stuff in an enterprise. They just bought IBM's xSeries and BladeCenter business. They are in quite tight with Intel when it comes to vPro management and SmartConnect. They are now rebadging thin clients and competing VERY hard on price against both Wyse (Dell) and HP.

        This is a play to deal with their failures in the tablet

        • Google bought Motorola Mobility. Motorola Mobility is not Motorola. Google also sold off some parts of Motorola Mobility. Lenevo gets the cell phone business. Full stop.
        • Motorola sells shitloads of gear to enterprise - handheld scan guns, manageable access points, ruggedized handhelds, etc. Lenovo now gets that business to leverage the rest of their sales as a "one stop shop" that no one else is set up to compete with - all they need to do is partner with a MDM provider that isn't garbage, and they'll already be better than Motorola was in 2010 when they were trying to hawk MSP to world+dog...

          Motorola Solutions sells the ruggedized handhelds and two way radios Much of their product line outside of the 2 way radios came from the acquisition of Symbol Technologies somewhere in the 2006-2007 time frame. Motorola Mobility was the cell phones, set top boxes, and all the other stuff. Totally separate companies.

      • Lenovo were already in the smartphone market with several Android phones [lenovo.com]. In fact, they were the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, shipping 45.5 million smartphones in 2013. Looks like most of those were in emerging markets though, so the Motorola Mobility acquisition should give them a big step forward into the western markets.

    • Yeah, they could have gotten all of that much cheaper than 1.56 B, if that's the actual number.

      In any case, their stated game plan with Moto wasn't to sell off the hardware handset division. Its was a screw up without a doubt, the only question is how much of a screw up was it.

      • In any case, their stated game plan with Moto wasn't to sell off the hardware handset division.

        what, they didn't tell everyone up front they wanted to sell, and let the decent employees and investors leave, and let the business languish for a few years so the stop would drop to a point and they'd have to sell it for a fraction of what they paid?

        of course they didn't say that, but it's obvious they didn't want motorola for the hardware business. why would they want to compete in an already saturated mobile device market with the same manufacturers that are making android dominate the world? they stood

    • Don't forget that Google is keeping the Motorola advanced R&D "moonshot" division that has some top end talent and is also worth something.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Those folks were not really part of Motorola Mobility. They were hired after the acquisition and none came from Motorola.

    • Re:The numbers (Score:5, Informative)

      by rlwhite ( 219604 ) <rogerwh&gmail,com> on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:49PM (#46111359)

      Google said in a filing that they valued the patents at $5.5 billion: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20... [nytimes.com]

      • they valued the patents at $5.5 billion

        One would be hard pressed to agree with that value given that EVERY time Google has tried to use them in court, Google lost...

        It's nice to have patents for defensive purposes but it's not clear these are doing that much for them. People seem to be treating patents like piles of coal, ignoring that one persons pile of patents is quite different than another... it doesn't matter if you have 10,000 patents if your opponent has a key one you cannot work around.

        As others h

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you're going to include what amounts to a $75 million footnote, you should also include the much more significant operational losses Motorola incurred during the time Google owned it which will significantly increase the cost (by most accounts, almost double your figure which, admittedly, is still about a third what the summary erroneously suggests).

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The cash and deferred tax assets stay with Motorola. Google does not magically get these. They are also no longer this large.

    • We don't know how much Moto cash and how many deferred tax assets are going to Lenovo as part of the sale. When that information becomes publicly available (if it ever does) we'll have a better idea what the final price was. Even if the patents (and the advanced development lab that Google is keeping) ultimately cost them $3 or $4 billion they probably got reasonable value for money, so although the Moto buy wasn't a home run by Google it wasn't a strikeout either.
  • by dc29A ( 636871 ) * on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:09PM (#46110887)

    At least according to BGR [bgr.com]

  • by stox ( 131684 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:10PM (#46110891) Homepage

    -3B Cash ,and -1B Tax breaks. That brings it down to 3.1B.

  • by DeathToBill ( 601486 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:10PM (#46110903) Journal

    I've seen pretty convincing analysis today showing that, when you take the tax benefits of the deal and Motorola's cash position into account, Google is about $1bn to the good out of the deal, and it's retaining the patents. So it has bought a loss-making company for $12bn, broken it up into bits it can sell for around $5bn, got $3bn cash out of it, and about $6bn off its tax bill over the next six years, while gaining a large and important patent portfolio. Doesn't look look like a loss to me.

    • And yes, I know the numbers don't add up. It's an approximation. Get over it.

    • The subtext, the one being ignored as people are totting up the ways Google made money on the deal, is that this is exactly the kind of behavior so often deplored when someone who isn't Google does it.

    • broken it up into bits it can sell for around $5bn, got $3bn cash out of it

      So they did the typical corporate raider routine! I thought their motto was "Do no evil"

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So it has bought a loss-making company for $12bn, broken it up into bits it can sell for around $5bn, got $3bn cash out of it, and about $6bn off its tax bill over the next six years, while gaining a large and important patent portfolio. Doesn't look look like a loss to me.

      So when Google does it, that's just fine, but OMG $companyOrInvestorNotNamedGoogle IS A CORPORATE RAIDER BASTARD WHO TOOK ER JERBS!!! for doing the same thing.

      Glad to see that the Slashdot double standard is still around.

    • by Brian Tarbox ( 2937461 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @01:55PM (#46112057)
      Not surprising of course but zero mention of the employees of Motorola Mobility and Motorola Home who got whipsawed back and forth these last few years. I remember celebrating back when Google bought "us" a few years back...only to quickly see that they had zero interest in anything but the patents. So happy to have gotten out early.
      • by symbolset ( 646467 ) * on Thursday January 30, 2014 @02:45PM (#46112595) Journal
        Google didn't send a CEO to Moto to drive the business into the ground prior to acquisition and drive the price down. Motorola Mobility did that to themselves before Google got involved. They put the business in such a state that Google had to either buy it or let the patents for the cellular phone go to patent trolls. Those patents include codec patents important for Google's free and open codec. People seem to be forgetting that piece.
      • by Xest ( 935314 )

        Yes, because it would've been a lot better if you'd have been left to file for bankruptcy or be taken over by an even more predatory buyer wouldn't it?

        If you're working for a failing company you should be grateful that anyone fucking bought you and at least prolonged your jobs for a few more years if nothing else. It's not exactly their fault that you guys were running the company into the ground in the first place is it? The other guys at Google don't work hard to stay competitive just to subsidise your ex

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Actually there's a whole bunch more accounting that was done, and you can reasonably argue that it basically cost Google about $1B to get access to the patents:

    At $12.5B, Motorola is Google’s largest acquisition to date. Google paid $40 /
    share in cash, but received ~$11 / share in cash and $8 / share in deferred tax
    assets. Thus the value ascribed to operations + patents was about $21 / share, or
    $6.3B, reflecting a multiple of ~0.5x sales and 12x EBITDA. Now adjusting this
    further for the $2.35B total consideration Google is expected to receive for the
    Motorola Home business, we get a purchase price of just under $4B for Motorola's
    handset business and patent portfolio (17K patents and 7.5K patent applications).

    http://www.zdnet.com/googles-motorola-purchase-was-it-worth-it-7000009356/
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7147251 (via)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    1. Patents that will later earn (or save) more money than they lost
    2. Talent (what do self driving cars and autonomous robots have in common: the need to communicate wirelessly)
    3. An indefinite multi-billion tax writeoff that ensures that Google joins GE and other large corporations that pay no taxes

  • Asset stripped.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dynamoo ( 527749 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:13PM (#46110951) Homepage
    Asset stripped and dumped [mobilegazette.com]. Thanks, Google.
    • by jratcliffe ( 208809 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @01:03PM (#46111527)

      Asset stripped and dumped [mobilegazette.com]. Thanks, Google.

      Classic case of whole being less than the sum of the parts.

      Motorola Mobility consisted of:
      1. a handset business
      2. a set top box business
      3. a patent portfolio
      4. a bunch of cash
      5. a bunch of tax assets, which the company couldn't use because it wasn't making enough money

      Google wanted the patent portfolio, so it bought the company (the price of which incorporated the cash), utilized the tax assets (which had been worthless until MM was purchased), sold the set top box business to a set top box maker (Arris), and is now selling the handset business to a company in the handset business.

      This isn't "asset stripping," since the pieces are worth more, and can be more successful, as separate pieces. It's breaking up a conglomerate that didn't make sense.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        In other words Google did effectively the same thing to Motorola that Carl Icahn does with his technology holdings, but with a lot less noise.

        • At least Google didn't saddle Motorola with their own $12B acquisition price (how can that even be legal?).

    • What is the Google motto?
      Something like 'Do Know Evil'?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    How about calling it a pointless waste. Google had an idea. Either they changed their mind or they weren't able to execute the idea.

    Either way, they lost $7,000,000,000.00 on the "deal'. It was a pointless waste. And now a Chinese company owns what was an important American technology company/division.

    Speaking of pointless wastes... I am again forced to use beta.slashdot.org [slashdot.org] Yea, it still blows goats.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I hope the SEC stops this sale to Lenovo. Already, sensitive agencies have banned Lenovo laptops... and having another core technology going to be owned by a country not friendly to the US is a bad thing.

    • they lost $7,000,000,000.00 on the "deal'. It was a pointless waste.

      Except they didn't, and they got what they wanted out of it - the patent portfolio.

  • The value of the patents is the question. The definition of Fair Market Value is the price determined between a willing buyer and a willing seller. The proposition that all Google was ever really wanted from Moto was its IP seems self evident. Google was willing to buy the Home and Phone hardware operations to get the IP. Google was under no constraint or duress. Like other major players in the phone space it had a need to own enough IP not to be a target for constant demands. The financial press sug
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Good job linking to the Slashdot subsite no one reads.

  • As far as I remember it was barely worth the massive bandwidth bills. But last time I heard about this subject was before the stupid video ads.

    • Well, according to Variety [variety.com] it is:

      YouTube is expected to generate about $5.6 billion in gross advertising revenue worldwide this year, according to a report from research firm eMarketer — an estimate considerably higher than previous Wall Street forecasts.

      Google doesn’t break out financial results of YouTube, the Internet’s No. 1 video destination by a wide margin. The eMarketer analysis, based on data points gathered from multiple research reports, tops previous projections for 2013 from firms including Jefferies & Co.’s $4.5 billion and Barclays Capital’s $3.6 billion.

      YouTube will net $1.96 billion in ad revenue, up 66% from 2012, after paying content and ad partners, according to eMarketer. YouTube’s projected $1.1 billion in U.S. net revenue would represent 6.3% of all of Google’s net ad revenues for the year, the firm estimated.

      About 79% of YouTube’s U.S. ad revenue is from video advertising, with an estimated $850 million in for the year. That would give it a 20.5% share of the overall $4.15 billion U.S. video ad market. In 2014, eMarketer estimates YouTube video-ad revenue to hit $1.22 billion taking a 21.1% share.

      To analyze YouTube revenue, eMarketer said it developed forecasting models based on third-party research on its ad revenue, ad impressions, rates, usage, partner fees and other figures.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I thought it was only teh Micro$$$oftss that had to buy companies and strip away their IP because of lack of innovation....
     
    come on Fandroids, where are your cries against this kind of IP dickering today?
     
    Disgusting. LOLzzz!!!! YOU AIN'T GOT NOTHING!!!!! Just a bunch of cheap dime store hoods with neckbeards.

  • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Here we go again...

      Everything MS and Apple does is evil and they can't survive without leeching off of Google. Google is good and will lead us to the promise land where there will be milk and honey and Google will keep us safe from the bad MS and Apple.

      Give it a frigging rest. We've seen time and time again that Google plays there games too. If it wasn't for you Fandroids they'd be on the heap of crap companies just like the rest.

      At one time Google did some neat stuff for the man on

    • The best analysis of this seems to be ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com], which looks into the conflict with Samsung. Even in the beginning of the deal, people were furrowing brows on how Google can be competing on hardware with the rest of Android.

      I live in Chicago. I have a relative in Motorola. Google spent a lot of cash to get people to move to the Merchandise Mart downtown, spending a huge wad of cash to lease out an entire floor of the Mart. This was very disruptive for the teams, and only would pay longer term benefits. T

      • by alexander_686 ( 957440 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @03:53PM (#46113245)

        I think they got rid of the handset division as fast as the tax law would allow. Take a look at this way.

        Motorola (M) could get a higher price is they sold their business as a packaged deal, Motorola Mobility (MM). They got more bidders that way. (It’s not exactly what they did, but it was effectively what they did when they spun off that division.)

        Google wanted the patents but not the hardware division for the reason you mentioned but they had to buy both. They wanted to get rid of it as fast as possible.

        Assuming MM was spun off from M in a tax free spin off, one normally has to wait about 2 years before one can sell off a division. If it was sold off before then it would trigger a big tax bill for MM. Most spin off require the spun off division to pay their parent’s tax bill if they are bought out.

        So we wait 2 years and 6 months and guess what happens – Google sells off the handset division.

      • The best analysis of this seems to be ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com], which looks into the conflict with Samsung. Even in the beginning of the deal, people were furrowing brows on how Google can be competing on hardware with the rest of Android.

        I live in Chicago. I have a relative in Motorola. Google spent a lot of cash to get people to move to the Merchandise Mart downtown, spending a huge wad of cash to lease out an entire floor of the Mart. This was very disruptive for the teams, and only would pay longer term benefits. This doesn't seem to me to be a strip-and-dump purchase by Google, but the Samsung-Tizen thing kind of forced their hand. People were worrying about Android fragmentation, and the sale of Motorola was the pound of flesh that Google needed to give up to stop a huge split with Samsung.

        That's not correct. Tizen is not an Android fork (it's actually a Linux fork) so it will not fragment Android. The sale of Motorola Mobile will not affect Samsung plans for lunching Tizen powered phones. In the two years that Google owned Motorola Mobile they didn't show any interest in running the company. The fact that Motorola Mobile waited almost two years to release new Android phones shows a lack of interest from Google. At the time that Google bought Motorola Mobile many of the posters on /. predict

  • by EMG at MU ( 1194965 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:46PM (#46111323)
    The summary tries to paint the picture that Google's acquisition and sale of Motorola was somehow not quite what Google had hoped for. When Google announced that they would buy Motorola Mobility on Aug 15 2011 Google closed at: $557.23. Today Google is at $1140. Between yesterday and today Google jumped > 3%. Obviously Google's stock price is influenced by many factors but the acquisition of Motorola has not seemed to deter the massive gains Google has experienced over the past 2 or 3 years.

    $12 Billion sitting in a bank account really doesn't do anything for Google, and it makes investors upset. So they bought talent and patents, took what they wanted from Motorola and are now selling the left over parts. They are not taking a loss. This isn't MySpace being bought for $500 million and being sold for $35 million, it is idiotic to suggest this was a stinging defeat. It was a shrewd business decision.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Remove the word "business" from you post and rethink. I am pretty sure there's some people here that are comfortable talking billions and business. However, I was Motorola's _customer_. I bought Moto X because it was from Motorola - Google company.Google engineering influence was obvious in this product. I expected more to come in the future which most likely won't happen.

      Think about Google and Motorola engineers. They worked in a company with a lot of opportunities to innovate, learn and grow. Now things l

  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday January 30, 2014 @12:57PM (#46111465) Homepage Journal

    I got up early for Motorola's Black Friday sale to get a developer's edition Moto X. They launched three hours after their advertised start time. Once their systems came online, I got an order in in less than three minutes. I got an order confirmation and hours later Motorola staff was posting on social media, urging people to buy the model I got. The next day, they send me a cancellation notice saying they have no stock and they're not going to honor my order, despite offer and acceptance.

    Google sucks at anything that requires anything that resembles customers service. Humans don't map/reduce well.

    • by bored ( 40072 )

      B&N did the same to me a couple years ago with the touchpad fire sale. They even took my money and had to refund it a month later when they discovered they sold a million of the things but only had 5 in stock.

    • I got up early for Motorola's Black Friday sale to get a developer's edition Moto X. They launched three hours after their advertised start time. Once their systems came online, I got an order in in less than three minutes. I got an order confirmation and hours later Motorola staff was posting on social media, urging people to buy the model I got. The next day, they send me a cancellation notice saying they have no stock and they're not going to honor my order, despite offer and acceptance.

      Google sucks at anything that requires anything that resembles customers service. Humans don't map/reduce well.

      To be fair, this was probably a Moto and not a Google issue. I used to work in Moto R&D.. wonder how morale is now.

      • To be fair, this was probably a Moto and not a Google issue.

        Until this announcement, Motorola Mobility has been a Google company.

  • Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)

    by saleenS281 ( 859657 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @01:11PM (#46111591) Homepage
    The Moto X was actually an outstanding phone. I dumped my gs3 for one. I think the real end-game here was getting Samsung back in line. Motorola phones were selling enough units to raise alarms at Samsung. It's not like Samsung was in any danger of losing their stranglehold on android phone sales in the short term, but long-term with Google's backing it was only a matter of time until Motorola started taking significant chunks. End result: Samsung has supposedly agreed to dump it's custom UIs and custom applications and fully embrace the Play store and the Google ecosystem. It seems unlikely the timing is just a coincidence.

    http://gigaom.com/2014/01/29/report-samsung-to-hold-the-touchwiz-on-future-android-devices/ [gigaom.com]
    • There are reports that Samsung threatened to fork Android. With the new UI they showed at CES, it sort of drove the message home with Google and apparently that prompted meetings that led to where we are now...
      • Re:Samsung (Score:4, Interesting)

        by saleenS281 ( 859657 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @04:58PM (#46113985) Homepage
        Ya, you have your history of events backwards. Samsung created Bada in 2010 not too long after Google started going after third parties who were including their apps without approval (read cyanognmod). Google acquired Motorola in 2011 AFTER Samsung started creating their own OS and their own ecosystem to compete directly with Google. Samsung continued down that path until this year, interestingly enough, just after the holiday season in which the Moto X started picking up steam. I'm guessing when Samsung saw VZW approve kitkat for the Moto X almost immediately after release, they saw how screwed they were going to be going forward. As a consumer, when your choice is Motorola with updates immediately after release and minimal bloatware, or Samsung who can be upwards of a YEAR later on VZW and an interface that you either love or hate, the choice is pretty easy. I can tell you I've personally steered at least 10 people away from Samsung and onto a Moto X after letting them play with my phone for 5 minutes and showing them that the spec sheet doesn't always tell the full story.
    • by rsborg ( 111459 )

      The Moto X was actually an outstanding phone. I dumped my gs3 for one. I think the real end-game here was getting Samsung back in line.

      So was a primary reason to prevent the Samsung android singularity?

      I think Google and Samsung are going to have clashes again in the future. Google has created a monster in South Korea, and this recent patent "harmonization" isn't going to prevent other "growing pains" as Samsung continues to eclipse any and all Android vendors (and continue to put pressure on Apple).

      I was hoping that HTC would regain some territory with the HTC One, it looked like a great phone - iPhone quality build+display, but Android

      • While the agreement details are still secret, the rumor is that part of the 10-year licensing agreement between Google and Samsung included Samsung agreeing to cease developing it's own app store, UI overlay (touchwiz), and OS (tizen). They may have it out again in the future, but I doubt Google really cares if Samsung tries to go a different direction in 10 years. Android will be so entrenched they won't make any headway by then. And to be quite honest, I think Google WANTS Samsung to kill off everyone
  • How is it that Google posts a $7Billion+ loss and the stock rises $30+ and Apple posts record profit yet the stock drops $50? That is just absurd!!
    • It's called The Economy, where many more numbers than profit and loss factors into stock price, see. And why depressions happen: People think they can outguess people with decades of experience and do better as Mom & Pop... happens enough, a lot of people lose their shirts when control is reasserted. That said, I will miss the old Motorola. But that's the 21st Century Economy: Profit, profit, PROFIT! or die.

      How is it that Google posts a $7Billion+ loss and the stock rises $30+ and Apple posts record profit yet the stock drops $50? That is just absurd!!

  • I doubt Microsoft will every be able to justify the 8 billion dollar price tag it paid for Skype.

    I think Google should go out to and make another wise investment. I would love to so MS buy something like Pinterest for 15 billion.

  • by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Thursday January 30, 2014 @02:20PM (#46112343)

    If Google didn't buy them, someone else would now have those patents.

  • bought Motorola for anything other than the patents, you're just fooling yourself. Having Motorola Mobility come with them was just the secret decoder ring in the cereal box. MM is not really as fun as it seemed at first, so time to put the toys away.

  • I just find it interesting that Google sells Moto, sure a maker of robust/reliable phones, but has capacity to make small wireless devices (routers, hotspots, RFID, monitors, sensors, etc...)....

    and then buys Nest...

    Looks like a changing of the guard. Moto culture likely fought with Google and Nest easily fits. The moto patents are a side story.

    • Exactly. Moto didn't lock bootloaders because they were forced to by evil carriers like Verizon... they did it out of religious zeal, and a belief that it was a moral imperative.

      To remake Motorola in Google's image, they would have had to literally fire most of Motorola's managers, and would have probably had to fire at least 10-30% of their engineering staff as well. They were able to do enough housecleaning to make the Moto-X and Moto-G happen, but Google knew that the rest of the company was too toxic to

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