BOMBSHELL: Google Buying Handset Maker Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Billion

[Feuer Frei!]

Google is buying handset maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. That's a 61% premium.
Needless to say this is a game-changer in the mobile world, as Google moves down the stack, and is no longer just an operating system provider meaning it competes directly with Apple as well as the various other handset makers who currently use Android.
What's more, one of the biggest arguments in favor of Apple's continued to dominance is that without a complete end-to-end "stack", no other platform could compete with its integrated software/hardware setup.
Bear in mind that Google has over $35 billion in cash, so this answers one question about what they'll do with it. The company still has tons more dry powder.


Other handset makers, like RIMM and Nokia are both up pre-market on the news as the focus obviously turns to Microsoft: Is it now forced to buy one of them? Or does Microsoft benefit because the remaining handset makers (Samsung, etc.) now turn more towards Windows?
Another angle that will be scrutinized is MMI's patent portfolio, and how that plays out.
That's one of the key points made by Larry Page in his post on the subject:
We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.


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