Maybe Google Really Is Buying Moto For Patents

CNN is reporting that Larry Page (Google CEO) is stating that Motorola is really all about the patents, so much so that Moto Mobility will be a segregated group inside of Google. In fact:

Google plans to run it as a separate company. Motorola will continue to license Android from Google and pay Google for the core applications that come with the operating system.

In fact, Motorola will be so separate from Google that it will have to bid to become the maker of the Nexus device, the flagship Android smartphone that comes out annually during the winter holiday season. Google receives bids and proposals from various handset manufacturers to make the device, and the company said Motorola will not automatically win the rights to make the next Nexus phone.

With that said, call me a skeptic. This may make sense when they’re getting regulatory approval and all and they need to sound all non-anti-trust and all, but the reality is that having an in-house hardware company would be far far bigger for Google. Yeah they piss off all of their vendors but they’d gain control of their OS and lose the whole fragmentation bit. It would make a lot better experience overall. Of course, the cost would be that the other vendors go AWOL on Android as well and of course that whole regulatory approval thing but I’m still predicting that within 3 years this fake segregation is removed and they become a typical in-house team.