Google and Motorola – Patentology On the Radio

Independent current affairs program The Wire, which goes out daily on a number of community radio stations around Australia, today broadcast a piece on Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility (see Google Joins the ‘Hardware Club’ While Microsoft Whines).

We were contacted by producer/journalist Farah Ahmed for comment, and were very pleased to contribute to the story, which can be downloaded here: ‘Google acquires Motorola Mobility’ at The Wire (MP3, 4 minutes, 1.6MB).

Overall, it is a very good piece. which manages to cover quite a lot of ground and to achieve a fair balance of perspectives, especially considering the time constraint.

The story opens with a quotation from the recent blog post by Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, which we reported in Apple v Samsung: Google Says It’s All About Android, specifically his statement that ‘Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on.’

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Tags: Acquisitions, Google, News, Smartphone wars

Google Joins the ‘Hardware Club’ While Microsoft Whines

If you have an interest in this blog, then you most likely already know that Google has announced its intention to buy Motorola Mobility, the handset division recently spun-off by Motorola, for a cool US$12.5bn.

There is no shortage of commentary already on the web, regarding whether or not this is a reasonable price for Google to pay, or whether the purchase is really just about boosting Google’s patent portfolio after missing out on acquiring patents from either Novell or Nortel.

Regardless of what others may be saying, we consider that Google has struck a pretty good deal, despite the fact that the price it is paying represents a 63% premium on the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares last Friday.  Firstly, this is a purchase that it can easily afford, considering that various reports place its cash reserves (prior to this deal) at around US$36bn.  The relatively high premium may simply mean that the market had undervalued Motorola Mobility.  More likely, however, the value-add to Google of acquiring the company is far greater than the price it has paid.

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Tags: Acquisitions, Android, Google, News, Smartphone wars