Via The New York Times:
The cuts are the first step in Google’s plan to reinvent Motorola, which has fallen far behind its biggest competitors, Apple and Samsung, and to shore up its Android mobile business and expand beyond search and software into the manufacture of hardware.
The turnaround effort will also be a referendum on the management of Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, whose boldest move has been the $12.5 billion acquisition.
Though Google bought Motorola partly because of its more than 17,000 patents, which can help defend against challenges to the Android operating system, it also planned to use Motorola to make its own, better smartphones and tablets.
Somebody ask Google’s partner Samsung how much those patents are helping them out this week in California. Spending $12.5 billion on Motorola will go down as one of Larry Page’s (and Google’s) biggest mistakes, and one of the most foolish purchases in tech history.
