Google has acquired Motorola Mobility for the tidy sum of $12.5 billion. This is largely seen as a move to combat Apple and Microsoft, but some are asking what it means for marketers.
This is largely a deal to acquire software patents and has no near-term implications for advertising, asserts Kunur Patel. Google insists Motorola will operate as a separate unit and will continue to make mobile phones and tablets under the Motorola badge. In other words, don’t expect Google phones and tablets — for now.
Motorola Mobility is ammunition for Google in the growing patent war with Apple and Microsoft, using their 17,000 patents with 7,500 pending. The company makes mobile phones, tablets and set-top boxes, all areas that Google has expressed interest in.
As for what it means for the Android OS, what it means is: Again, nothing, according to Google, noted Patel. In a call with analysts this morning Android chief Andy Rubin said Google expects to keep Android open and Motorola won’t be getting special services. One of the knocks on Android is that because it is an open-source platform (and not an operating system) every mobile phone manufacturer deploys a slightly different flavor of Android. That means app developers can’t create a single Android app to run on all Android phones and instead have to tweak the code to run on different systems. The obvious advantage here would be that Google would enforce a uniform operating system for all Android-powered phones, but both companies say that is not on the table.
As for the deal potentially going through, Google has come under a mountain of government scrutiny lately with the Federal Trade Commission launching a top-to-bottom investigation of every part of Google’s business. This deal will surely fall squarely within the FTC’s sights and it could force the Mountain View, Calif.-based behemoth to sell off parts of Motorola that it considers important to keeping the landscape competitive, or it could scotch the deal altogether. The key to understanding this is to what degree the FTC will consider this deal under a separate threshold to its larger inquiry. Despite Google’s seemingly unstoppable growth, it doesn’t dominate the mobile media market the same way Apple does, concludes Patel.
Source: AdAge
