Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility - Sad

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard that Google has agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility (yeah, the part of Motorola that builds the phone handsets) for $12.5 billion in cash (at $40 per share -  a 63% premium over the market close price on Friday).

I know, right?

It's clear that Google is buying the moto unit, not to expand their market share, not to get into the handset business, not to add shareholder value - but to get their trove of 14,600 patents (and the 6,700+ pending patents).

Personally, I think it's an extremely sad state of affairs.

Clearly, Google feels threatened by the Oracle lawsuit, and the Apple lawsuit and the Microsoft lawsuit. All these large, deep-pocketed, industry leaders are trying to do a single thing: sue the Android operating system into oblivion over patent rights - OR, at the very least, make Google pay a patent "toll" for the right to distribute the operating system for free.

Why are they not going after Palm's WebOS? Or Symbian? Both of those are free (and open) as well.

The answer is: they don't matter. They have no market share. They have no mind share. They have a small installed base.

On the other hand, Android commands a majority of not only the phone market (Apple hates that - as does Microsoft), but they're starting to make noises about making inroads into the tablet market (Apple clearly doesn't want that) - and Oracle is laughing their asses off since they acquired Sun (the folks that invented Java and hold key patents to the underlying technology).

So - what's a company with $39 billion in cash to do? Sure! Buy a patent rich handset company that will be - according to Larry Page on a Google conference call this morning:

I’m really excited about this deal. There are competencies that aren’t core to us, but we plan to operate it as a separate business, so they have competency there. I’m really excited about protecting and supporting the Android ecosystem.

Thump (other shoe dropping).

TRANSLATION: "We don't know the phone business and don't care. Motorola has been struggling and their getting their lunch eaten by HTC anyway. The handset business will do whatever.... the main thing is - we got their patents before someone else did."

So here's the latest tally: patent trolls 3; innovation: 0.

World Holding Collective Breath - For A... Phone?

I'm here on the west coast - a mere 4.5 hours away from San Francisco and a mere 3.5 hours away from "history in the making". The most-anticipated, most-speculated about, most-hyped event in the known universe!!! It's.. it's... it's...

The introduction of a mobile phone.

It's just a phone. Really. You can make calls on it, listen to music on it, and now - you can (probably) even use it in Europe. Now your iPhone can (probably) use GPS and (probably) Exchange Server. Cool? Yes. Worth hyperventilating about? No.

There has been so much speculation and nuh-uh rebuttals this past week - that I think I'm ready to puke.

On one side, you have the twinkie-and-jolt "MS Windows is just as good if not better than that iPhone crap" side waiting with bated breath for the Blackberry Thunder, and on the other side... well, you-know-who. The folks that think (and vote with their dollars) that the iPhone is the end-all, be-all of the mobile communication universe.

Hey, some of my friends have the iPhone, and it's a cool piece of hardware - that much, I'm not denying. I don't personally own one, so I everything I know about it comes from them - or from fondling one at the Apple store across the street from my office.

I don't have a Blackberry either. I don't have a Windows Mobile phone. In fact, I don't have a "smart" phone at all.

My phone is old, dumb, and nearly indestructible. It's a Motorola v547 - and I didn't even buy it myself - I got it as a gift. I haven't bought a new phone in over 5 years. I don't own an iPod (my daughter and wife do, though). I'm using XP, not that fancy Vista. I have an iMac, upgraded with Leopard on it (that has had the motherboard replaced and crashes like a mother).

Needless to say, I'm in the market for a phone, and maybe an MP3 player. I've wanted to replace my phone for about 6 months. Then the Android announcement came out. Then the iPhone 2.0 announcement came out. Then the Blackberry Thunder announcement came out.

So, I'm keeping an open mind - and I'll be watching at 10:00am PST when the equally beloved and beguiled, sweater-and-jeans clad, Ron Popeil of the tech age makes the hallowed announcement...

Oh, and I'm heading to the Apple Store at lunch time...

Clone Home

Rumors have been flying fast and furious over the last few weeks as to the future of Power Computing. For those of you who don't know (or care) - PowerComputing is (has been) the #1 clone Macintosh manufacturer and the industry leader in Mac OS technology for the past two years. Reported price: $100 million.

It is reported that Apple will purchase Power's assets. Power will retain its name and logo, and continue operating through the end of the year.

Apple's clone market slogan from the beginning has been: "Expand the market, don't cannibalize it." Read: "Don't do anything better than us - like marketing, sales, delivering on-time, offering customers lifetime support, creating cool technology, etc. because it will 'cannibalize' OUR crappy sales efforts, lame products, late delivery, no support and general mis-management."

It looks like Steve Jobs got far more for the $150+ million that Bill Gates recently "invested" in Apple - he picked up on Bill's "if you can't beat them, buy them and beat them up" strategy.

As if taken from the Official Microsoft Play book - Apple is effectively "buying off" the competition. Loud competition. Real in-your-face competition. Competition with a REAL marketing department. Competition with a REAL management team.

Who'll lose? Us. PowerComputing is now going to be making Wintel machines (including notebooks). Just what the world needs - another hardware manufacturer. Hopefully, the folks at Power will be able to pull it off, and provide the same quality/feature to price ratio as they had in the Mac OS market. If so they'll succeed. If not, they'll fail.

What about the future of clones and cloning? Well, Motorola still remains the most viable cloner (as do the companies such as PowerTools which buy its OEM equipment from Motorola). You see, Moto is a licensor of Apple's OS, not a licensee. Not even Steve's buddy Bill Gates has enough money to buy THEM - and even if they did, Bill doesn't want another Justice Department proctology exam.

While other clone makers have voiced their continued support for the Mac OS clone market (i.e. UMAX, et al), it looks like Moto is going to be, by default, the big winner. It's not going to "bet the clone farm" on just the boring PowerPC boxes, but has recently inked a deal with Apple to build and market CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) machines. These machines will run ANY OL' OS - not just the Mac OS. It seems that even THEY are hedging their bets...