Now we know that Google’s purchase of Motorola was a “gargantuan mistake,” said Verne Kopytoff in Time.com. Just three years after shelling out $12.5 billion for the phone-maker, Google last week announced its sale to electronics company Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion. “Google’s exit after just 22 months isn’t exactly surprising.” The decision to acquire Motorola, a complex manufacturing operation with chronically slim margins, “never seemed convincing.” Offloading it is a smart move, since investing more in its operations would be “risky and tangential to Google’s more important Android software business.” Sure, this divestiture comes at a high price, but “making big bets on risky projects” is part of Google’s culture. “Usually, the failures are relatively small and disappear quietly, never to be seen again.” This “misstep was big and unavoidably public,” but Google can afford to take the hit.
Whatever it may look like, Google’s dalliance with Motorola was no failure, said Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg.com. “The reason can be found in the part of the company that Google has retained—a portfolio of thousands of patents.” That intellectual property may prove useful down the road, helping Google develop new products, ward off lawsuits from rivals, and drum up licensing fees. Motorola’s more than 17,000 patents have also helped the company take advantage of offshore tax schemes that whittle down its tax bill. Google made only a “halfhearted try” at making handsets. But “it takes the patent cache more seriously. That part of the Motorola deal might not have outlived its usefulness yet.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
How much of a blow is ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu?Today's Big Question Action by Hague court damages Israel's narrative that Gaza conflict is a war between 'good and evil'
-
UK gynaecological care crisis: why thousands of women are left in painThe Explainer Waiting times have tripled over the past decade thanks to lack of prioritisation or funding for women's health
-
'The Hum': the real-life noise behind The ListenersIn The Spotlight Can some of us also hear the disturbing sound that plagues characters in the hit TV show – and where is it coming from?
-
Issue of the week: Do high-speed traders rig the market?feature Wall Street is abuzz over high-frequency trading.
-
Issue of the week: How Yellen spooked the markets
feature At her first press conference, the new Federal Reserve chair made the mistake of indicating when the Fed would raise interest rates.
-
Stop calling women ‘bossy’
feature Let’s ban “She’s bossy.” Instead, let’s try, “She has executive leadership skills.”
-
Issue of the week: GM’s recall disaster
feature Mary Barra is facing “her first big test” since she took over as GM’s new CEO in January: a recall of more than 1.6 million vehicles.
-
Issue of the week: Who gets Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits?
feature Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s shareholders want their money back.
-
Issue of the week: Comcast buying Time Warner Cable
feature Has Comcast won the cable wars?
-
Issue of the week: AOL’s million-dollar babies
feature AOL’s “gaffe-prone” CEO, Tim Armstrong, “got in some hot water” last week.
-
Issue of the week: Why was hiring so slow in December?
feature A very disappointing jobs report for December douses a budding era of good feeling with “a great deal of uncertainty.”