image courtesy of engadget.com
You can’t help seeing the huge amount of coverage around Google’s purchase of Motorola, announced this Monday. Depending on who you read, Google really stuck it to Apple and Microsoft, Motorola had Google over a barrel and made them pay through the nose, and/or Google is smartly protecting the Android ecosystem while increasing its mobile bottom line.
There are lots of opinions out there from some very smart people. So being a communications guy, I decided to deconstruct Google CEO Larry Page’s public statement, made via Google’s Public Policy blog.
I’m a big fan of Google’s blog. The various company execs (or their ghost writers) typically lay out their positions very persuasively and succinctly, in language non industry insiders can understand. In the past I’ve shared the blog with tech clients as a good example of taking clear positions, supporting them well and avoiding too much industry jargon.
But of course there are words and then there is meaning. So let’s try and take a trip into Larry Page’s head on this deal. Here’s a close look at selected passages from his post “Supercharging Android – Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility.”
Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, we are always looking for new ways to supercharge the Android ecosystem. That is why I am so excited today to announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.
Meaning — check out our success to date, and we haven’t even really been trying. To really supercharge this, we’re going to do the hardware too. Plus if we hadn’t bought Motorola, they were going to buzz kill the whole operation by suing other Android manufacturers with their patents.
This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.
Meaning — we think we can do hardware better than anyone else. But we’re willing to let them try and keep up.
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.
Meaning — hey, we’d prefer to just win through better engineering and being smarter, but patent trolling is how the game is played. If we have to spend billions of our own money to win in the market by preserving competition, well then it is what it is.
Unlike some commentators, I do think Google can find a balance between making its own hardware while not discriminating against current OEM partners like Samsung and HTC. They’ll do this for two reasons:
- Ego — I don’t mean this is in a necessarily pejorative sense. I think Google sincerely believes it can make better hardware than anyone. If they show favoritism to Motorola, then that would be “cheating” in their engineering dominated corporate culture.
- Enlightened self interest — If Google is perceived to be discriminating against OEMs that could drive them into the arms of Microsoft. That could be just what the new Windows Phone needs to grab relevant market share. Google needs help getting through this period of application specific apps to the promised land of HTML5. Eventually that standard will bring program once, deploy everywhere to the mobile web, not just the wired one.
One final thought I haven’t seen anyone mention is whether this positions Google closer to doing everything itself — OS, handset and network. After all, Google unsuccessfully participated in the 700 MHz auction in 2008, and is very active in the white space debate. Maybe if mobile carriers keep complaining about being dumb pipes, Google will say OK, we’ll be the smart one.
Is it likely? No, it would be extremely difficult with many technical and regulatory obstacles. It would also have to make business sense. But with its culture of exceptionalism, it just might be tempting for Google to try.