Google Chairmain Eric Schmidt was at the keynote speech yesterday during Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce convention and he swatted away a bit of conventional wisdom by saying that Google bought Motorola for more than just patents.
Google plans to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility and many believed this was due to the patents Motorola owns because this could protect Android from the variety of infringement lawsuits it is facing. You can’t blame people for thinking this, as the official announcement had multiple hardware makers praising the deal because it would “protect Android.”
That did factor into the buy, but Schmidt said there is far more to the deal:
We did it for more than just patents. We actually believe that the Motorola team has some amazing products coming….We’re excited to have the product line, to use the Motorola brand, the product architecture, the engineers. These guys invested the RAZR. We know them well because they’re Google Apps users … [We like] having at least one area where we can do integrated hardware and software.
Schmidt is known to produce some gaffes mainly because he says things that are true but either shouldn’t be said or need to be phrased in a different way. I’m actually pleased that he said Google is going to go with integrated hardware and software to go directly after Apple and its iOS products.
[Via Business Insider]