Under Google, Motorola Will Focus on a Few Great Devices

The Motorola acquisition is officially done. It's been many months in the making, but as one of the largest such deals and certainly Google's biggest acquisition, it underwent quite a lot of scrutiny. 

China was the last to give the go-ahead, but once it got that approval, Google was quick to make the official announcement. It has now completed acquiring the phone maker so the interesting part starts. Nothing spectacular is going to happen in the short term, but it will be really interesting to see how Google and Motorola work together and how Google will fare in the hardware space. This marriage is even more important as Apple and Google compete on more and more planes and as Android is getting stiff competition from within, i.e. non-compatible versions of Android based on the open source code.

Google's Larry Page is enthusiastic about the deal, but then again, he would be as he's the driving force behind the whole thing. "I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone," the cofounder and current CEO said. Sanjay Jha, who is largely responsible for the deal and the favorable terms, is out as CEO, to be replaced by longtime Googler Dennis Woodside who has most recently been acting as President of Google's Americas region.

Woodside is already creating himself a new team at Motorola, he's hired several people but is keeping some from the old team as well. "Our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility’s remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world," he said about future plans. This is probably what everyone was expecting to hear. Motorola is a minor player at this point and needs some standout devices to start making a name for itself again. It may come up with these devices under Google, but the odds are stacked against it.

Google is getting 17,000 patents out of the deal and several more thousands pending, but that alone would not be much of a bargain. Clearly, it's interested in becoming a serious hardware player, but its chances of challenging Apple when no other experienced hardware maker has been able to, certainly not Motorola, are slim for now.

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