Google Acquires Motorola
 

China clears Google acquisition of Motorola, eliminates last barrier to Googorola bliss (update) -- Engadget

for 12.5B

even knowing its decline I would've never saw this happening say 5 years ago. :pokerface:

i thought they bought motorola last year? oO

oh they just started the process last year

Inb4 idiots start saying that all the Google phones will be made my Motorola.

Was this just for the patents?

^ yes. theres a thread in here somewhere that states that.

yeah its mainly to try and protect themselves from the likes of microsoft/apple

Yeah the htx x was blocked from USA, even though the offending patent was never in it :fulloffuck:

The acquisition was announced last year, it just got cleared by the Chinese govt. (EU and USA have both greenlighted earlier) So, the legal barriers are cleared for further work/integrations.

Not entirely true. The main reason was that Motorola was about to start asserting its IP against all the other Android OEMs. Sanjay Jha (Moto CEO) hinted at this last year and people were wondering what he actually meant. A week later at an earnings call he clarified it to specifically state they were going to use their IP both as a method to generate revenue from other Android OEMs through licensing and as a way to make Motorola phones more competitive in the market through differentiation.

That second point is the most important one. It's the exact same tactic Apple is using. Sue a competitor over a feature you own the IP to. Competitor must then modify their product to remove that feature or face a ban. End result is your product has a feature the competitors don't. Do this enough times and suddenly there are significant differences between you and all the other OEMs, which make your products stand out.

Apple and Microsoft can do this because they control the OS. For Android it would have been a fragmentation nightmare as you would have even more variation between vendors, going far beyond the customization and skins they currently use.

There's no way Google could allow this to happen. Their acquisition was as much about protecting Android from Motorola as it was protecting Android from Apple/MS/Oracle or anyone else.

HTC had two ways they could have handled this:

1. Provide sample devices to US Customs to allow them to inspect them to verify they no longer have the infringing IP. Wait a week or two until paperwork is finalized and devices are approved for import. Continue importing and selling phones.

2. Ship your phones to the US. If and when they get seized, wait for a week or two until US Customs finishes their investigation and approves the devices. Shipment gets released and it's business as usual.

I'm not a lawyer, but even I understand the concept of an exclusion order. Future products from a company under an exclusion order must ensure those products don't infringe. This is similar to providing devices to the FCC to get them approved (which HTC had already done more than a month ago). So how come they can provide the necessary information to the FCC to get their devices passed, but weren't able to provide US Customs at the same time?

This could all have been avoided last month and the public would never have had a news headline that reads "HTC phones blocked by Apple".

Then again, maybe that was the real reason they "forgot" to get their devices inspected.

If so that would be smart! Fight dirty against a dirty company

^ I'm sure AT&T and Sprint, who both had launches planned around the phones being available for this last Friday, would disagree with that.

Probably! But then Apple makes them a lot of money, so they are kind of handcuffed

my bad i live under a rock

And just like that Sanjay's out and replaced by Dennis Woodside from within Google. He's "sticking around" to aid with the transition.

well that was to be expected i guess