Google Assures Motorola Mobility Will Run its Own Course
Motorola Mobility will keep operating autonomously, Google said on Thursday, but the Internet giant admitted too that the mobile phone pioneer will need to tread closely unto Google's corporate vision following its formal acquisition by the tech titan last month.
In his address yesterday to Google investors, Patrick Pichette, CFO of the dominant search engine firm, said that the company's $US12.5 billion purchase of Motorola mainly represented the addition to Google of "fantastic assets that need to be reset, reprioritised."
Those assets, as earlier indicated by Google Chief Eric Schmidt, were all about Motorola's "sum of the patents, the products, the people ... and the innovation."
Analysts said that Google's move on Motorola Mobility was wholly motivated by the company's intent to wear sufficient protection in the event that its expansion would spark patent conflicts in the future.
The 17,000 exclusive patents that came with Google's ownership of Motorola were all worth of every penny that the company had forked out, experts said, which in the long-run should shied and arm its mobile platform, Android, as the mobile device competition further heats up.
Despite speculations that Google would eventually favour upcoming Motorola mobile devices, Mr Pichette issued assurances that as agreed with global regulators, Android will remain an open platform that is readily available to handset vendors.
With or without the eyes watching over on how Google will behave over the next five years, the Google executive declared that Motorola Mobility will act independently within the guidance of the tech titan.
"You shouldn't expect a full integration of the two companies," Mr Pichette was reported as saying by Agence France Press (AFP) on Thursday in stressing that Motorola Mobility will run its own determined course.
"We are not integrating Motorola with Google ... (but) we're making sure it has everything it needs to win in its own space," the company's top finance official said.
While he acknowledged that the growing smartphone market has become a crucial combat field for Google, Mr Pichette pointed out that "it's important (Motorola Mobility) stays on its own battlefield."
Google has formally won the nod from global regulators in May on its expensive means of beefing up its in-house patents arsenal, which was highlighted by the company's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the hardware division of the American firm that is widely regarded in tech world as the inventor of mobile phones.
Analysts said that Google did not spend billions to purchase a company that has seen its better days in the mobile phone market, which is currently ruled over by Apple and Samsung, but to make a wise and forward-looking investment.
As Google expands its territory in the fierce tech world competition, it may step on sensitive toes (read: patent rights) and the thousands of patents afforded by the Motorola deal should come handy in the event legal suits come breathing hard on Google's neck.