Every time they made a public presentation of it, further away from the IBM PC for your pocket it moved.
First it was that that Google was to be the only producer of endoskeletons, and that it would house custom chips. OK, that's on par with the IBM BIOS.
Then they started talking about how modules would only be available via their Play store, and tied to your Google account. They were not even sure if they would allow the resale of used modules.
Then they started talking about moving the mobile radio into the endo.
Then, right before official cancellation, they talked about a complete rethink where just a few small parts could be replaced.
I'm sorry but this is bullshit.. the obvious interpretation is that Google wanted the patents and ended up with a business line they weren't interested in. Leveraging it for PR the way they did was insincere at best, especially on such a short timeframe.
Also it's entirely unclear to me what the outcome might have been for Motorola as a whole, had Google not been having wet dreams about its patent portfolio. Perhaps you have some insight here that you're not sharing?
"What IBM did was to create a piece of hardware which everyone bought into. And built it out of generic enough parts that it could be cloned. I'm not sure who the equivalent player this time around."
-- I don't think there is an equivalent to IBM in the handset market.
IBM had a powerful steamroller when it came to branding, sales and cash - most people hopped on the PC Compatible standard (including DOS) because it was the "sure thing". Not because DOS was inherently more open than, say, CP/M.
Google has a similar steamroller (at least in the respect that to a lot of people, Google = Internet) but unless most people are demanding a "Google Phone" then handset makers aren't going to fall over themselves to hand over their lunch to google.
Google and the developer community will have to build something pretty incredible and build a lot of mind-share with the general public, I think.
Nothing is a giveaway. It's all in exchange for your data, which is what they are profiting off of.
And yes, Ara was an awesome Motorola project that Google will now ruin with walled garden design. The endoskeleton is not intended to be third party-able.
This article makes out that there will be a gPhone. They denounced it, the machine doesn't exist, nor will it in the near future. Google is an application company, they develop for platforms.
My personal theory / guess (and let's face it, we're all guessing) is that Google doesn't particularly want motorola for phones at all.
I think they've decided they need an in-house capability to produce hardware in general and they intend to suck all the juice out of Motorola and then discard its corpse so that they have the ongoing ability to invest in R&D for hardware like Google Glass, self driving cars, etc. Just like they decided years in advance of needing it that they had to have a mobile OS in their arsenal, they've now decided that strategically they have to be able to produce hardware. Not because they want to but because there are strategic initiatives they can't pursue without that.
Think of it as the biggest acqhire in history (+ a boat load of patents, of course).
Most of the points seem to be "Google doesn't know hardware". This is a valid point, but the article mostly reads like this one point repeated over and over.
First, it discounts the fact that Google isn't inheriting a shell company; those former Motorola employees? They're still there.
Second, so what if they don't already have a dedicated hardware factory already? They've got a dedicated team, one that's proven. Danger, Inc.
I'm surprised by the author using Motorola as a historical example of acquiring that went wrong. I thought the goal of acquiring them was for the patents and the sell off was the bits Google didn't want or need.
Do you have any evidence that Motorola was going to just give away Ara and not own the ecosystem? You know, the company that was hemorrhaging money and teetering on bankruptcy wasn't going to try and own the IP of the endoskeleton and charge for access to it?
motorola was patents ($8B in protection IIRC) + key talent acquisition (called ATG at the time). I don't think Google ever wanted the bulk of motorola's operations or rf engineering.
They bought it, stripped out the things they wanted to keep, then spun it back out.
I always thought Google gave out hardware strategically because they wanted every engineer to easily do side projects targeting, e.g., a phone with up-to-date Android and a smartwatch. I wonder if this means end-user adoption is now more important.
How different to the days of working at Symbian (many years ago).
There:
Engineers: "We should do X, Y and Z!"
Technology Managers: "Our owners/partners don't want us to do any of that. We have a five year lead on the competition, we don't need to do this stuff."
Google Nexus One announcement:
"Together with those partners, we have increased the rate of innovation. The volume [and] variety of Android phones... have exceeded our expectations. But we want to do more and one of the questions we asked ourselves a long time ago was, 'What if we worked even more closely with our partners to bring devices to the market that are going to help showcase very quickly the technology we're working at on Google."
My prediction for the mobile industry: further disruption.
There were strong rumors 1 or 2 years ago that Google was interested in building its own silicon in order ot have the SoC they want for the future of Android.
Even if it is true, with Google's pathological lack of focus, this could have already been abandoned though.
Soon after the acquisition, Google, really Google X, started working with Motorola on a new watch, prototyping it on existing hardware (Motoactv?). Within a few weeks, the whole thing got cancelled. Not sure if that was because of the Samsungs of this world complaining or because of government agencies.
Source: I was supposed to run the dogfood program in the NYC office. I never got the watches, but somewhere I still have the USB extension cords and the (then quite fancy) chargers with dual USB ports, one for your phone and one for the watch.
Yeah, I generally agree with that framing. That’s a good detail about samsung that I was not aware of. But I will say that from an ex-insider perspective — what you describe is mostly a failure.
Google was searching desperately for revenue diversity and was acquiring pretty hard at the time. I think the intent with Moto was to acquire a hardware shop and establish a market leading brand to compete directly with Apple. They eventually arrived at Pixel by building it entirely in-house. That Moto got raided for IP and spun out to Lenovo did not meet those (high) expectations. There was no need for anyone to take a loss but I think Google wanted to make a whole lot of money and did not.
I think the subtext is that. before, the Google line on the acquisition is that it was solely for the patents. Possibly to not piss off their other partners who are making the hardware that competes with Motorola. To my knowledge this is the first Google exec to admit publicly that having control over both the hardware and software platforms could make better products.
First it was that that Google was to be the only producer of endoskeletons, and that it would house custom chips. OK, that's on par with the IBM BIOS.
Then they started talking about how modules would only be available via their Play store, and tied to your Google account. They were not even sure if they would allow the resale of used modules.
Then they started talking about moving the mobile radio into the endo.
Then, right before official cancellation, they talked about a complete rethink where just a few small parts could be replaced.
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