Google-Motorola Deal

‘What the Google-Motorola Deal Means for You - Yahoo! News

 

The tech world is abuzz with the news: Google's trying to buy Motorola Mobility, the division that makes smartphone handsets powered by Google's open-source Android operating system. If the deal goes through, this will be even more momentous than the Microsoft/Nokia partnership; Nokia may be helmed by a former Microsoft exec right now, but it's remaining a separate company. Motorola Mobility won't.

 

So, yeah, stockholders and investors will move money around based on this deal. But what does it mean for you as an electronics buyer?

 

Motorola handsets may have just gotten more attractive

 

Let's review the facts. Motorola makes crazy-powerful hardware, like many of the Droid series of smartphones and the Triumph for Virgin Mobile. But at the same time, it usually saddles its creations with UI "skins" like MotoBLUR, which work differently from other Android handsets and tend to get in the way of things.

 

Meanwhile, Google hasn't traditionally made hardware at all. Everything Google's wanted to make, from smartphone handsets to "Chromebook" laptops, it's done through its hardware partners. And it's always had a vision for what these gadgets should look like, a pure and uncluttered experience that Google showcases in the Nexus phones made by its most favored partners. But aside from those Nexii, its vision keeps getting diluted by manufacturers.

 

Will this change once the deal goes through? Probably. One of the world's biggest software companies just bought one of the world's biggest smartphone manufacturers. And while HTC, Samsung et al are publicly feigning excitement, you know that they know their competitor just got handed a whopping advantage.

 

Google TV may make a comeback

 

Google got all excited about its "Google TV" idea awhile back, which was basically an Android-powered TiVo. But it's faced a ton of opposition from networks, and ended up as a lot more complicated to use than Google perhaps intended.

 

Well, Motorola makes "home devices and video solutions," as Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry of Business Insider points out. So does that mean Google TV is making a comeback? We're about to find out.

 

The Android world just fractured

 

And that, again, is a little abstract, so let's put this in simpler terms. You know how you can go into a store and ask for an "Android" smartphone, and they'll give you something like a Droid, maybe?

 

It's not going to work that way anymore. Maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not for a little while after the deal goes through (which could be as late as "early 2012"). But instead of a flood of undifferentiated Android handsets, you're going to see the Google / Motorola brand distinguish itself in some way, through some exclusive features that only they have.

 

Likewise, HTC's going to go all-in on developing HTC Sense and its stylus interface, while Amazon's skunkworks tablet project is going to come to fruition, creating an "Android" device that may bear more resemblance to the Nook Color than to the Xoom. Why not? They can't depend on Google, not when it's picked its new BFF. So they're going to have to do this on their own.

 

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

 

Anything