Googlemoto

Googles purchase of Motorola Mobile seems so obvious in retrospect: Googles Android operating system is what runs half the smartphones sold today,but the iron laws of the 21st century digital world were being ignored. One: that the real profits go to the hardware guys,not the software guys. Two: that a company needs to control an entire ecosystem of products: the operating system,the applications,the hardware they run on. Googles Android less buggy than Windows Mobile,more adaptable than the BlackBerry,more adult than Apples iOS only has two of those three. Google finally went for the third.

Indeed,back when the Google phone was first being talked about,most people thought that it meant an actual,physical phone,not an operating system. We might finally get what we expected. Questions,too,will be asked. Many argue that this will send the other two major Android phonemakers,Samsung and HTC,sniffing around Microsofts operating system,for example. But they were quick to release statements in support of Googles purchase of a competitor insisting it meant that Google was deeply committed to defending Android. What was that all about? It was because the smartphone world now is all about who can amass the most patents,and who can most effectively defend those patents in court. Apple,with its well-known corporate rapacity,has been the most ferocious and litigious defender of its patents,scoring a notable victory against the Android/ Samsung Galaxy in European courts just last week. This is how Google has struck back: through purchasing Motorolas 17,000 patents,which allow its cash-rich team of lawyers enough ground with which to defend Android against patent-heavy Apple and Microsoft.

How does this leave the rest of us? Even if Larry Page and Sergey Brin have scored again What an idea,Sergey! as the SMS joke doing the rounds on Monday had it will it affect the phones we buy? Certainly. Because the patent wars were reducing the chances that we got cheap,innovative phones. The quicker they end and Googles warchest means they wont last long the better for those of us who buy phones.