Google + Motorola = Synergy

It seems a strange marriage at first - if I was to describe Google it would have to be as a waifish Haight Ashbury Flower Power girl from the late 1960s, while Motorola is the penultimate nerd - starched white shirt with pocket protector, sliderule and industrial strength black rimmed glasses. Certainly the cultures can't be more dissimilar. Yet this unlikely pairing may very well end up being one of the most significant events of this decade in the technical arena.

Google has had a long history of establishing relationships and performing actions that looked a little wacky at first glance, but ultimately ended up making a huge amount of sense longer term, a technical jujitsu. Chrome entered into an already crowded browser market and has not only stalled Firefox's momentum, but was the final catalyst for breaking Microsoft's hold on the browser space by not only being better but by being better in ways that could simultaneously appeal to the average person and to corporate Internet needs. The announcement of the Android operating system supercharged the smart phone market (and in many respects made people receptive to the rise of tablets even though Apple was first there with the iPad) and provided a much needed standardization in this space.

The Motorola acquisition is more of the same. In one move, Larry Page managed to neutralize the looming patent battle that it would have been with the company most responsible for the cell phone in the first place, it shifts those cards to its own deck making it harder for others (notably Apple and Microsoft) to sue over patent infringements for Android, and brings in a wealth of expertise in the form of engineers and managers who have played in this space for decades. This should help Google avoid the likelihood that their ability to experiment and innovate with Android would get compromised by the platform being dragged into court.

Yet in many respects this is just a side effect, albeit an important one. The acquisition gives Google fabrication facilities, distribution chains, and support infrastructure for hardware development. Some of those will go into state of the art smart phones and pads, no doubt, though Page also knows that he has a minefield he has to walk in that area because of existing agreements with those who have licensed the Android OS. That's why I suspect that while there will be a Google Android Phone, it will not in and of itself be any more or less competitive than any other Android based phone system ... it's not really in Google's interests to completely alienate its channel partners by competing with them.

Instead, I see Google focusing their efforts in a few other areas. Robotics, embedded computers and sensor systems are a logical next step for Google, especially those in the data acquisition area. Google also has a track record of persistence - when they have marketing failures, this usually doesn't close off the avenues of exploration, but instead forces a retracing back to the concept stage and a relaunch with new parameters. Look at where Google doesn't have a presence - I find it significant that they should announce a games development platform for Chrome only a few days before the Motorola buyout, as tablets and smart phones are in a good position to supplant the Sony playstations, Microsoft XBoxes and Nintendo DS systems out there. Imagine Halo, Tomb Raider or Kingdom Hearts deployed on a "Google Game Pad" and you begin to see where this may lead.

Similarly, Google understands that the social media space has already left the PC platform, and is likely not going to make the same mistakes there that Microsoft made with its "social" Kin phone. Kin failed because it tried to be a dedicated social media device, rather than being a generalized entertainment/communication/gaming platform. If Google can integrate wireless HDMI into their devices, they also slide back around to GoogleTV without the need for the set top box, which proved difficult because relatively few people buy dedicated set-top boxes; they instead get them from their cable or satellite provider. Combine these with gyroscopic controls, TCP/IP networking, bluetooth and GPS, and you have the ability to coordinate games and social media activity across hundreds or thousands of different devices. By buying into Motorola, Page also puts himself into a position to develop chips that Android partners can also license. From Google's standpoint, the hardware costs are far less important than the potential for penetration into the ad, entertainment and gaming markets that Google/Motorola chips open up, even if in an HTC, Samsung, or Ericsson phone.

Compare and contrast this with Microsoft's recent partnership with Nokia and rather bizarre acquisition of Skype. Microsoft was in a desperate situation with regard to the cell phone market - Windows 7 mobile is just not making the inroads into the mobile space that Microsoft needs to be competitive there, and the only way that they could was to establish a formal partnership with one of the few unaffiliated phone vendors left. They're also hampered by the fact that there's still a strong sense that the Windows look and feel must be emulated at the device level, which means that they're even now trying to grok this whole not-a-desktop metaphor and failing, especially because their business model is tied up so fundamentally to selling operating system licenses. This means that they're not making the bold acquisitions that they need to remain competitive, and risk losing out even as other vendors chose either to adopt Android (which most will likely still do, compared to the expense of creating and maintaining their own) or take the leap into the OS fray (as HP and Apple are currently doing). Indeed, ironically their best move for Microsoft might be to put the head of the XBox dev team in charge of their corporate strategy - they GET it, as both XBox and the Kinnect prove, and Microsoft making a clean break and building up from a different platform with an eye towards the future might be the soundest move they can make.

Google's motto seems to be moving to "Expect the Unexpected". In many respects, while Microsoft sees Google as being its primary competitor, Microsoft has dropped down to perhaps #3 for Google. The battle seems to be shaping up between Apple and Google, and the Motorola acquisition may be one of the most important salvos in that war.