At least, so says Eric S. Raymond:
We’ll see a lot of silly talk about Google getting direct into the handset business while the dust settles, but make no mistake: this purchase is all about Motorola’s patent portfolio. This is Google telling Apple and Microsoft and Oracle “You want to play silly-buggers with junk patents? Bring it on; we’ll countersue you into oblivion.”
Yes, $12 billion is a lot to pay for that privilege. But, unlike the $4.5 billion an Apple/Microsoft-led consortium payed for the Nortel patents not too long ago, that $12 billion buys a lot of other tangible assets that Google can sell off. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google’s expenditure on the deal actually nets out to less – and Motorola’s patents will be much heavier artillery than Nortel’s. Motorola, after all, was making smartphone precursors like the StarTac well before the Danger hiptop or the iPhone; it will have blocking patents.
I don’t think Google is going to get into the handset business in any serious way. It’s not a kind of business they know how to run, and why piss off all their partners in the Android army? Much more likely is that the hardware end of the company will be flogged to the Chinese or Germans and Google will absorb the software engineers. Likely Google’s partners have already been briefed in on this plan, which is why Google is publishing happy-face quotes about the deal from the CEOs of HTC, LG, and Sony Ericsson.
