Obviously the big news for the day, is that Google is set to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion dollars. Speculation as to the motivation of the acquisition has been running rampant across the internet. Most of it focused on the assumption that the primary reason is that Google wants Motorola's patents so they can help protect the Android ecosystem as a whole. That particular theory turns out to be spot on. Here's a quote from CEO of Google, Larry Page, from a post he wrote on Google's blog,
"We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to 'protect competition and innovation in the open source software community' and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies."
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