Google CEO Larry Page explains reasoning behind Motorola acquisition (spoiler: patents)

In a post penned by Larry Page on Google’s company blog, the CEO explains why Google decided to shell out $12.5 billion to purchase smartphone vendor Motorola Mobility. While Page had plenty to say about Motorola’s extensive history and its leading role in Android’s explosive growth, he also points to what many believe to be one of the leading factors behind the deal: patents. “We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android,” the CEO wrote on Google’s blog. “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.” Read on for more. Regarding where this deal might leave other big Android partners such as Samsung and HTC, Page was sure to indicate that Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility will not push them out of the space. “This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform,” Page noted in his post. “Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.” Google is obviously looking to build a scenario where it can control the end-to-end Android user experience as a result of this acquisition, but it also appears that the company is looking to protect the Android ecosystem as a whole by using patents obtained through the deal to fight off assailants like Apple and Microsoft.