Summary: Shortly after Lenovo was confirmed to have taken IBM's x86 server business it is also confirmed that Google's hardware business is to be devoured by Lenovo
A LOT OF PEOPLE may not remember this, but Google explained that it bought part of Motorola because it could not afford to let Microsoft and Apple (which had reportedly put a bid in) get yet more Android-hostile patents after they got most of Novell's and all of Nortel's, among others' (AOL's and other smaller companies). Patent stacking is an abusive, obvious collusion against software freedom in this case.
Moreover, as we
pointed out before (in our many posts about Motorola), Google automatically inherited a patent case that determines the future of Android. Microsoft later sued Google over patents, simply because Motorola was no longer independent (at least the mobility part).
For Google, using Motorola to produce actual phones was not necessarily a good idea; it would alienate OEMs/partners at OHA, notably Samsung (which started to explore other operating systems like Tizen as an insurance policy). By stopping to explore the hardware side of things, Google would appease some partners, and even some regulators (notably the Chinese regulators, who gave Google a hard time at the time). Rather than develop nothing using Motorola's skills and facilities, Google should pass the development side to real producers. And Google did the right thing!
Google is now offloading much of Motorola and the substance goes to a giant hardware company [1,2,3]. As
Muktware put it, "All’s not lost" because "Lenovo has risen from the ashes to become the biggest pc vendor for a few years running, and we hope that they continue the ingenious path that Motorola has embarked on while under Google’s care. In the mean time, we anxiously wait to see what other crazy ideas Dugan and her team will come up with."
Lenovo also
took another chunk of IBM earlier this month. This demonstrates the "China Rising" trend and there's not much one can do to resist it (many phones these days are made in Taiwan, mainland China, Korea, and so on). In a way, the news about Motorola and Google means not much will change when it comes to patents and litigation. Google may need those patents to create a strong enough deterrence against the cartel which includes CPTN, Rockstar, Nokia (becoming part of Microsoft), etc.
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Related/contextual items from the news:
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In a strange twist, it has just been reported that Google is set to sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for a sum of 3 billion dollars. Google purchased Motorola in 2012 for a sum of 12.5 billion. From the surface, it seems like it’s a loss of 9.5 billion if the deal does go through, but there’s more to it. Lenovo has purchased patents and parts of IBM in the past, and have been linked with a bid for Blackberry among others as recently as last year. This news in particular comes as a major shock to us because Motorola was just turning things around with the Moto X, G and their wide variety of customizations.
