THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GOOGLE-MOTOROLA DEAL: It Could End Up Being A Disaster

<http://www.businessinsider.com/goog...2011-8>
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GOOGLE-MOTOROLA DEAL: It Could End Up Being A
Disaster

But let's be real: This deal could end up being a disaster.
How?
Well, for starters, the deal creates major channel conflict:
Google is now competing with its partners. And hardware
manufacturing is an entirely different kind of business than
Google's core business. And hardware manufacturing is a
crappy, low-margin commodity business. And Motorola is
massive--Google has just increased the size of its company by
60%.
...
The only reason Android (and Google) have any share of the
mobile game, after all, is because hardware makers like HTC
and Samsung adopted Google's software platform. And now
Google is stabbing them in the back.

By now, it's probably too late for Samsung and HTC to switch
to another platform, so they'll have to smile and make the
best of it. But still... having your software "partner"
suddenly fire a missile down your throat can't feel too
good. And if Google-owned Motorola starts to gain share in
the hardware business, the feeling (and tension) will only
get worse.

Second, is this an acknowledgment that, in smartphones,
Apple's integrated hardware-software solution is superior to
the PC model of a common software platform crossing all
hardware providers? It certainly appears to be.

Android's biggest weakness thus far has been its
fragmentation: The combination of many different versions,
plus many different customizations by different hardware
providers, has rendered it a common platform in name only

Some good points: Google is now in the hardware business competing with its
own partners... and at least giving the impression that it figured out Apple
is right to have the hardware and software controlled by the same company.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.