Big news today as ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world COBRA tech giant Google announced that they will be buying Motorola Mobility at almost double what their closing stock price was last Friday, for a total of $12.5 billion. Is this the end of the world? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria?
Actually, as much crap as I give Google, this is a smart move for both them and Motorola, unlike other mergers whose very idea makes me pink with rage. As some of you know, I have been hunting for a new phone to replace my now 30-month old iphone 3. Not 3gs, just 3, or as I like to call it, El Bricko. I, along with a bunch of other tech nerds, have been anxiously awaiting the superpowered and redundantly named Motorola Droid Bionic, a dual core phone that could probably help you plan an invasion of Europe.
My only hesitance with the Bionic is the user interface. Yes, it’s an Android, but then Motorola also bundles on top of that a bunch of their proprietary bloatware. My boss typically wants to throw his Motorola Droid X2 out the window every few days because of how many buttons he has to push just to make a damn phone call. I’ve used HTC and Samsung phones before, and I gotta admit the Motorola interface is more clunky.
Now combine that with Google’s forays into mobile-phonedom, which have mostly been, to put it nicely, educational experiments in failure. Their interface was nice and clean (they did develop the Android operating system, after all), but the phones themselves were kind of lacking in features and pizazz.
So, let’s mix that chocolate and peanut butter together and see what we get? Top of the line technology for the phones coupled with intuitive design– you’ve got a contender in my opinion.
Now this announcement by Google comes just weeks before the launch of the Bionic, which both it and the Samsung Galaxy S II are trying to beat the next iphone to market. Let’s see if Google will have anything extra they plan to throw in to sweeten the deal? Could they be planning on launching the first Android OS 4.0 , codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, build on a Motorola phone? If so, this would be a huge jump for all of the Adroid phones, the most advanced of which are currently running Android 2.3- Gingerbread or 2.2 Fro-Yo.
I think this will be good all around- giving a struggling tech company with a need to make a big splash and improve their market share a place to live where the software giant can use their tech to its full advantage.