Bloomberg reports that Google has appointed one of its own executives, Dennis Woodside, as the new CEO for the newly acquired Motorola Mobility. Woodside was previously in charge of integrating the acquisition, so it may be an appropriate move on Google’s part to give him the lead.
Previously the President of Americas at Google, Woodside will replace Sanjay Jha, Motorola Mobility’s current CEO. It remains to be seen how acquainted Woodside is with the world of mobile hardware, but it looks like we’ll soon see in the coming months.
The 12.5 billion acquisition has been questionable at least for the search giant but it looks like it’s moving forward with changes of this sort even before the deal is actually closed. In all likelihood, the deal will be closed sooner rather than later and it’ll be interesting to see just what Google has plans for with Moto.
During initial talks about the acquisition, Google had stated that it would continue to keep Motorola at an arm’s length, and that it would continue to be an independent subsidy. Now, with Woodside at the helm of Motorola Mobility, we’re beginning to wonder just what Google meant by that previous statement. Who knows, maybe it will stay true to its word and just wanted more Google blood running the company. And unless you believe, Meg Whitman’s words in an attempt to defend WebOS, we can imagine that Motorola Mobility will be quite slow to start, and Android will remain an open-source platform.
[Via: BusinessWeek]