Google paying $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility - chicagotribune.com

[Owen Densmore]

Weird and wonderful .. Google buys Moto:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0816-motorola-google-20110816,0,2384558.story

Most pundits are looking at the patent protection and the ability to have a flagship (read sorta iPhone) device.

I think the real reason is to attempt to align at least a google phone and tablet so as to be at least a bit of competition with Apple.

But I think this will fail.  Apple has iTV, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Air, Laptops and desktops.  And Lion aligns THEM so now Google will have to try to figure out how to get the entire Google ecology to be as coherent as Apple.

Well, you say, they can at least now commit to an Android phone with a coherent evolution into the future like the iPhone 2,3,4.  But that's just a fraction of Apple's ecology.  TV?  Well the Google TV (Sony) hasn't exactly won the hearts of millions.  Laptops?  Desktops? Air? .. did the Google Laptop do much (Chrome based critter).  I think its dead Jim.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Android to well and be an open alternative to The Apple Hegemony.  But Google has time and again failed to bring coherence to a market. Lots of great tech.  But only geeks can "get" Google Docs and Analytics.  Google App Engine is quietly sinking.  There are just too many parts and they can't align them.

It IS cool tho.

   -- Owen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 8/15/2011 10:29 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Android to well and be an open alternative to The Apple Hegemony.

http://hothardware.com/News/Android-at-48-Market-Share-in-Q2/

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[Russ Abbott]

See http://www.businessinsider.com/google-motorola-deal-2011-8

 

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________

  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

  Google voice: 747-999-5105
  blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
  vita:  http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
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On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

That's great. But if the Google/Motorola deal goes through, Google is in a position to mess up whatever Motorola has going for it. In addition, the other phone manufacturers that use Android are likely to start looking around for alternatives since they will be competing with a company that has an inside track. 

I would love to see it do well, but it seems to have so many strikes against it from the start.

 

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________

  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

  Google voice: 747-999-5105
  blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
  vita:  http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
_____________________________________________ 

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 8/15/2011 10:29 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Android to well and be an open alternative to The Apple Hegemony.

http://hothardware.com/News/Android-at-48-Market-Share-in-Q2/

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[Owen Densmore]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

48% is nice.

Sent from Android.

I'm not sure the numbers really add up in the sense that having a lot of phones using android really delivers google as an alternative to apple, or puts google in the strategic position apple is in.

Looking at tmobile's lineup:

http://android.t-mobile.com/android-phones 

.. I note that there is only on motorola phone, and one that is least popular.  

Samsung and HTC are the rulers of the android market.  And they tend to present a "fragmented market" as the pundits observe: android phones have very little identity, certainly not like iPhone does with a coherent evolution from the iPhone 2,3,3s,4 and soon 4s/5.  And note, moto was one of the first to piss all over the great google ui, giving you "blur" .. a fat, hard to scrape off your device interface.

So lets assume the moto->goog phone really works and google creates the same sexy line of ever better phones, just like iphone.  But it still leaves google out of the greater picture: the convergence and ecology apple has with phones, tv, laptops, tablets, pods and so on.

Apple has shaped the current market.  They forced coherence by controlling ATT, even to the point of selling digital access by the month for pads.  They knew they would be screwed by ATT (dropped calls, lousy service, bogus broadband and so on) but did it anyway because they had a longer vision of where they are going.  If we are to believe the buzz about the next iphone, it will likely be truly a world phone, operating on CDMA & GSM, and even being agile with the bogus GSM broadband frequency use ATT has (non compatible with europe).

So I think this is going to be hard (but fun!) to read for a while.  If google really does want to be like apple in terms of complete vertical integration of their phone brand, can they be anywhere near as creative as apple has been?  Or are they too on a convergence path that leverages their advantages with search and services?

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