After reminding readers that Daniel Lyons “has always been an ass,” which is a bit more charitable than our usual description of him ( royal asshole ), Daring Fireball’s John Gruber gets into the meat and potatoes of his analysis of the Google-Motorola deal:
“Maybe Google really did want those Nortel patents, and when they didn’t get them, they knew they were in a worse position than ever, patent-wise, with Android,” Gruber writes. “And then Motorola started threatening — publicly, just this month — to wage patent warfare against other Android handset makers. And started talking about support for Windows Phone. We now know that while Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha and badass 11-percent-of-the-company shareholder Carl Icahn were making these threats to wage a patent civil war against other Android handset makers, they were actively negotiating with Google on a buyout. Does anyone, Lyons included, think it’s a coincidence that these stories — not based on speculation but on-the-record statements by the CEO and the company’s biggest shareholder — came out one week before this acquisition was announced?”
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“That’s not to say it wasn’t a bold, brash move, or even to say it wasn’t the right move for Google and for Android as a platform. But that’s all relative to the position Google was in — and that position was a weak one, and to pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious,” Gruber writes. “And don’t forget that it leaves Google in a tenuous situation with the two leading Android handset makers, Samsung and HTC. I think Apple and Microsoft probably feel pretty good, competitively, about having forced Google into spending $12.5 billion for Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales, no recent profits, and misguided management.”
Much more in the full article – recommended here.
MacDailyNews Take: Historically, those who play chess with Steve Jobs, a man who always seems to see several moves ahead of everyone else, have not fared well.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Karla S.” for the heads up.]