Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor at how stuff works dot Com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across for me as always, although some have sued him
Speaker 1: to stop. Senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Have you heard about
Speaker 1: Hugo and Kim? Did they really get pinned? Did she
Speaker 1: kiss him and cry? Did he pin the pin on?
Speaker 1: Or was he too shy? Is she really going out?
Speaker 1: Different songs? Yeah? I know that was one written by
Speaker 1: Shulas Joe Jackson. That's a lie. It was a hit.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. All right, Let's let's move on to our topic,
Speaker 1: shall we, before we this really falls apart. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk today about Google Goal and it's
Speaker 1: planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility and and what that means
Speaker 1: and why Google would be considering it, and uh, kind
Speaker 1: of just sort of look at the topic and talk
Speaker 1: around it. It's kind of interesting because this this was
Speaker 1: first announced in August of eleven August to be exact,
Speaker 1: and typically August tends to be a slow month in
Speaker 1: tech news, but the August of twenty eleven was anything but.
Speaker 1: It started off like any typical August in the tech world,
Speaker 1: but within the second week things just went out of control,
Speaker 1: crazy bananas and Google Motorola was one of the big stories,
Speaker 1: or so we thought. Other stories later eclipsed it. But
Speaker 1: let's let's kind of talk about this and the The
Speaker 1: details of the deal here are that Google would be
Speaker 1: paying around forty dollars per share in Motorola stock, which
Speaker 1: is an increase of around six of the value at
Speaker 1: the time of the announcement. Yeah, about twelve point five
Speaker 1: billion dollars billion with a B y. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. And keep in mind, well,
Speaker 1: why would Google want to buy Motorola Mobility? What are
Speaker 1: some of the reasons? Okay, well, to start off with,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like Google buying companies is unheard of.
Speaker 1: Google's got long history of doing that, right, but typically
Speaker 1: it's there are they are purchasing companies that the that
Speaker 1: Google can turn into something else, like for example, when
Speaker 1: they bought Rightly. Rightly was an online word processing UH
Speaker 1: software that you used in your web browser, which became
Speaker 1: part of Google Docs. Yeah, it's kind of more service
Speaker 1: oriented than hardware oriented. That's really what Google was focusing on,
Speaker 1: or advertising giants. Sure, which feeds directly into Google's line
Speaker 1: of revenue, makes sense, you know, it's Google Products Services exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: But with Google purchasing Motorola Mobility, motor Motorola Mobility was
Speaker 1: a a fairly recent spinoff of Motorola, which has been
Speaker 1: around for a long long time. And Motorola was the
Speaker 1: company that invented the cell phone. The very first cell
Speaker 1: phone was a huge cell phone by Motorola that wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't meant for consumers, it was a prototype and
Speaker 1: uh and famously, the the head of Motorola at the time,
Speaker 1: made a call to uh I think it was Bell
Speaker 1: Labs from the street out in front of Bell Labs
Speaker 1: his office in order to kind of rub their nose
Speaker 1: in the fact that that Motorola had built the first
Speaker 1: cell phone. I believe the words that they used as
Speaker 1: they were waving up to the person in the office
Speaker 1: of Bell Labs was you who Yeah it was, which
Speaker 1: you can also translate into nanny nanni boo boo yes.
Speaker 1: And then the the six trucks it took to carry
Speaker 1: the phone right drove off. It wasn't quite that big,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was rather clunky. So anyway, Motorola
Speaker 1: definitely has a long history, well even longer than that.
Speaker 1: Remember Motorola CB radios in the nineties seventies. They predate
Speaker 1: that by by quite a few years. So it's Motorole
Speaker 1: has been around for quite some time. But they're known
Speaker 1: for making things physical things, and Google is typically not.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when it came out with the the
Speaker 1: NEXTUS one cell phone, the hardware for that was not
Speaker 1: made by Google, it was made by HTC. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the question is why would they do that? And the
Speaker 1: first reason this is this is one of the cool things,
Speaker 1: you know, a tech stuff. We don't usually cover breaking
Speaker 1: tech news. I mean, you might mention something on the blog,
Speaker 1: but when we actually get to it in a podcast,
Speaker 1: we've had a chance for the news and commentary to
Speaker 1: develop on it somewhat. So the initial news was Google
Speaker 1: bought Motorola Mobility because it had thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: patents um And this has been in the news a
Speaker 1: lot lately to where Google and Microsoft and Apple and
Speaker 1: HTC have all been going at one another on who's
Speaker 1: violating whose patents and Google doesn't have a lot of patents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and to be to be clear, to be clear,
Speaker 1: Google was kind of outside of these arguments. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were directly involved in the sense that the arguments
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with the Android operating system,
Speaker 1: but the actual lawsuits did not target Google. They targeted
Speaker 1: the hardware manufacturers that we're using Android operating system. Google
Speaker 1: is uh is not a bit player in this. They
Speaker 1: have a big steak in the outcome of these arguments, right,
Speaker 1: so Google definitely has a lot to lose if the
Speaker 1: arguments go against the manufacturers, but they didn't have really
Speaker 1: much recourse to act out against these lawsuits because they
Speaker 1: weren't the ones named in the lawsuit. And so Google.
Speaker 1: Google's move to purchase Motorola Mobility might have been fueled
Speaker 1: in part with this desire to get hold of these
Speaker 1: thousands of patents so that the company could protect itself
Speaker 1: against UH patent lawsuits, patent infringement lawsuits. And the way
Speaker 1: you put protect yourself against the lawsuit isn't that you
Speaker 1: prove that your idea is original or that you have
Speaker 1: the patent on whatever idea it is. That's that's at stake.
Speaker 1: It's to say, if you sue me for infringing on
Speaker 1: this idea, then I can sue you for infringing on
Speaker 1: these ideas. And it becomes this thing where it's almost
Speaker 1: like the Cold War, right, It's where these different companies
Speaker 1: are building up arsenals, except their arsenals aren't weapons. They
Speaker 1: are patents, patent portfolios. And it protects them because they
Speaker 1: know that if another company tries to sue them, they
Speaker 1: can countersue, and it makes the whole thing counterproductive. So
Speaker 1: you're more likely to reach an agreement with another major
Speaker 1: company where perhaps you agree to license the technology across
Speaker 1: both companies for multiple companies. If there's more than that
Speaker 1: involved in a lawsuit. Yeah, and it it uh sometimes
Speaker 1: works out where people are sort of exchanging, you know,
Speaker 1: making exchange. So I'm licensing these patents. You know, for
Speaker 1: every one of these I make, I'll give you ten
Speaker 1: dollars for these patents, And for every one of these
Speaker 1: I make, you give me twelve dollars for those patents,
Speaker 1: and we'll just call it a day. Um. The thing
Speaker 1: is a patent is basically a protection of intellectual property,
Speaker 1: and it's on file with some patent office somewhere. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times ideas will be patented in Europe
Speaker 1: and in the United States and in you know, different countries.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, they're these are high stakes games
Speaker 1: that people are playing. But that's only the first I
Speaker 1: would I would say that was the first obvious thing.
Speaker 1: The other obvious thing is that Google is making the
Speaker 1: Android operating system, and Motorola with the droid UM and
Speaker 1: several other Zoom Zoom the tablet. Yeah, um was making devices.
Speaker 1: So until this point, the Android operating system was free
Speaker 1: for multiple uh uh companies to o e M companies
Speaker 1: to license from them. So you have people like HTC,
Speaker 1: You've got Samsung, um LG, Motorola licensing the Android operating
Speaker 1: system for use on their handsets, and that's helped Android
Speaker 1: gain one of the biggest market shares, crazy market share,
Speaker 1: like over the course of a very short time. Yeah it.
Speaker 1: Even though the iPhone debuted before Android, Android caught up
Speaker 1: to iPhone and got a wider distribution. And there are
Speaker 1: multiple reasons for that. For one, unlike the iPhone, um
Speaker 1: you know, iOS is only found on the iPhone. That's it.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well, for for phones, for phones. It's also
Speaker 1: found on the tablets, the iPads. But I'm just waiting
Speaker 1: for someone to write in, I'm glad that you said that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so for but four phones, OS is only found on
Speaker 1: the iPhone. And you might be able to find different
Speaker 1: generations of an iPhone out on the market at any
Speaker 1: given time, depending upon when you go to the market.
Speaker 1: But they were all manufactured for Apple for Apple, and
Speaker 1: it's just the iPhone line. If you wanted an Android phone,
Speaker 1: you have lots of different choices across multiple carriers. And remember,
Speaker 1: for a long time, iPhone was just stuck with not stuck.
Speaker 1: iPhone was only available on a T and T and
Speaker 1: then actually in the United States, and then eventually it
Speaker 1: was also available on Verizon and there are now rumors
Speaker 1: that it will come to other carriers as well. But
Speaker 1: that limited the adoption rate of the iPhone as well,
Speaker 1: just because some people were locked into contracts with other
Speaker 1: carriers or they had they knew that the other carriers
Speaker 1: had better service in whatever area they lived in, and
Speaker 1: even though they might want an iPhone, it just wasn't
Speaker 1: practical based upon their particular situation. But because Android phones
Speaker 1: were available across multiple carriers, across multiple handsets. It gave
Speaker 1: people a lot more choice. So there's no surprise that
Speaker 1: Android caught up in the marketplace and then started to
Speaker 1: go beyond everyone else, at least in the smartphone market.
Speaker 1: If you look at the cell phone market overall, then
Speaker 1: Android is not the dominant operating system, but in the
Speaker 1: smartphone the branch of the cell phone market, Android's winning right.
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden, now Google owns one
Speaker 1: of the manufacturers to whom it was licensing the its software.
Speaker 1: And now, well, of course I haven't actually heard any
Speaker 1: of the other manufacturers say anything. Most of them. Most
Speaker 1: of the comments from the other manufacturers have been we
Speaker 1: and we trust that this is not going to in
Speaker 1: any way impact our relationship with Google. So so in
Speaker 1: other words, like HTC would say, yeah, Google's buying up
Speaker 1: a company that creates competing products with our products, but
Speaker 1: we trust that Google is not going to of them
Speaker 1: preferential treatment and hurt us in the marketplace. And you know,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, that's probably lip service that you know,
Speaker 1: what else is HTC going to say? But I've read
Speaker 1: some good arguments that this could very well be the case,
Speaker 1: meaning mostly because if you look at all the different
Speaker 1: handsets that hold or in products that have Android operating
Speaker 1: system on it. Motorola Mobility consists of around roughly of
Speaker 1: all the products that have Android on them, which means
Speaker 1: you have eighty five of the products that have Android
Speaker 1: on them are made by other manufacturers. So why would
Speaker 1: Google endanger the relationship with eight of what of the
Speaker 1: products out there that run Android? Why would Google put
Speaker 1: that at risk? If they were to give preferential treatment
Speaker 1: to one uh one company over everything else, it would
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense from a numbers perspective, right from
Speaker 1: business perspective. And also we should say that Larry Page,
Speaker 1: who is co founder and the CEO of Google said,
Speaker 1: uh this this is an excerpt of a quote. We
Speaker 1: will create amazing user experiences that supercharged the entire Android
Speaker 1: ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners, and developers. I
Speaker 1: look forward to welcoming Motorolan's to our family of Googlers.
Speaker 1: And I guess the idea here is that you take
Speaker 1: the hardware expertise from Motorola, and you take the the
Speaker 1: the systems expertise from Google, and you work with those
Speaker 1: to try and create new systems that would be uh
Speaker 1: ideal for Android users, but not necessarily try and keep
Speaker 1: that just to Motorola. It might be that again that
Speaker 1: Google makes patents on these things and licenses out to
Speaker 1: other manufacturers, so that you might have Google and Motorola
Speaker 1: coming up with these new ideas, new ways to implement
Speaker 1: the operating system in a really innovative way, but they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be kept just to Motorola products. But so yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was what. Those were the two big
Speaker 1: things that I that I saw in the days immediately
Speaker 1: following than the news of this deal were oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: look at all the patents they've got, and we really
Speaker 1: are talking about thousands and thousands, and there are thousands
Speaker 1: of other patents that have been submitted but haven't been
Speaker 1: ruled on yet, so they haven't been issued or declined.
Speaker 1: So there there could be even more of the works.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I've heard that it's possible that Google
Speaker 1: doesn't even know everything that's in that portfolio, but you know,
Speaker 1: they were buying it for the intellectual property, and oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, what happens with all these other manufacturers. Some
Speaker 1: say that they think that people like Samsung and HTC
Speaker 1: might look again at Windows Phone seven. Um, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: actually heard that Microsoft may receive a shot in the
Speaker 1: arm because Windows Phone seven, despite critical acclaim, has been
Speaker 1: flagging in the market place, and so this might give
Speaker 1: them a uh, give other manufacturers and impetus to to
Speaker 1: take a look again at the operating system and hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should create more Windows Phone right because because
Speaker 1: the philosophy is, despite what Google saying, how can how
Speaker 1: can it even be possible that the Motorola phones with
Speaker 1: the Google operating system that we're all, you know, everything
Speaker 1: that was developed within Google was developed with these phones
Speaker 1: possibly in mind? How can we compete against that? I mean,
Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm out in the market to buy
Speaker 1: an Android phone, and I know that Google owns Motorola Mobility.
Speaker 1: Even if Motorole Motorola Mobility remains it's as independent as
Speaker 1: it possibly can be under the umbrella of Google, I'm
Speaker 1: tempted to buy Motorola because I would logically, I would
Speaker 1: think anything that Google does that's innovative is going to
Speaker 1: be aimed at this particular kind of hardware over the
Speaker 1: other kinds. Even if that's not true, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: what's in my mind, Well, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who aim for the Nexus is because they think
Speaker 1: they're going to get the upbring system build before anyone
Speaker 1: else does. Yeah, the Nexus, the Nexus one, the original,
Speaker 1: and then the NEXTUS which is Samsung's and a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, well, these these are the phones that
Speaker 1: are designed to be the pure Android experience. Google has
Speaker 1: said that they were going to give out the all
Speaker 1: the builds that the phone can handle, so nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: hold anything back. Because some of the other manufacturers have
Speaker 1: have messed around with the operating system and they say, well,
Speaker 1: it's not the same. Like HTC is known for its
Speaker 1: HTC sense Um modifications the operating system, Motorola actually has
Speaker 1: Moto blur Um and UH and both of them have
Speaker 1: their fans and attractors. Um they say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: HTC is not gonna give me the update from my phone,
Speaker 1: and I really want that, so I'm gonna make sure
Speaker 1: I get the next or you know, the same thing
Speaker 1: for all of them. I've I've heard complaints about all
Speaker 1: of the different manufacturers because they say, well, they're so
Speaker 1: intent on creating this experience on top of Android, and
Speaker 1: I just want the pure Android garnet. It's kind of
Speaker 1: funny because the day that we're recording this is the
Speaker 1: day that I got the heat Gingerbread update to my
Speaker 1: Android phone. Uh so yeah, I mean, and Gingerbread has
Speaker 1: been out for a long long time. For you people
Speaker 1: in the future who are listening to this podcast, it's
Speaker 1: not that uh gingerbread is is fresh out of the oven.
Speaker 1: It's been available on other devices for a while. I
Speaker 1: just got it as of September two. Um. Anyway, but
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead, no, no no, no, go ahead. I
Speaker 1: was going to say that that one of the arguments
Speaker 1: I would use against the people who say this was
Speaker 1: purely a patent grab is that, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it looks like a lot of those patents that Motorola
Speaker 1: has wouldn't necessarily be useful in patent lawsuits. It's they
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily be that valuable. Uh. In that case, some
Speaker 1: of them probably are, but not all of them. And
Speaker 1: it and it may very well be that most of
Speaker 1: them aren't terribly useful for the whole patent lawsuit warfare strategy.
Speaker 1: But another reason is because Google was part of a
Speaker 1: bidding war for another group of patents from Nortel, which
Speaker 1: ended up being a four point five billion dollar package
Speaker 1: of O patents, and Google did decided not to continue
Speaker 1: to bid on that and and pass that chance up.
Speaker 1: But then they spend twelve point five billion on Motorola Mobility.
Speaker 1: So you could either say, well, perhaps they view that
Speaker 1: the patents that Motorola holds more valuable and more relevant
Speaker 1: than the patents that Nortel held, or they could be saying, well, no,
Speaker 1: this really is because we want to have a platform
Speaker 1: to work with when we're developing Android, not just the
Speaker 1: patents that come along with it. Well, it seems like
Speaker 1: um now, I actually, uh, the best article I've found
Speaker 1: on all these different pieces of fallout was from Renee A.
Speaker 1: Riccio of inc. It was a long time tech journalist,
Speaker 1: and she she was pointing out too that Nokia also,
Speaker 1: uh might receive a shot in the arm from this,
Speaker 1: because there's been a long time, Uh there's been a
Speaker 1: rumor going on for a long time that Microsoft might
Speaker 1: want to pick up Nokia. UM, and this just makes
Speaker 1: it all the more possible that somebody might gobble up Nokia,
Speaker 1: which has been around for a very very long time,
Speaker 1: also has done a lot of innovation, UM not not
Speaker 1: as visible here in the United States. UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: they've had a lot of phones over the past using
Speaker 1: the Symbian operating system and so there might be an
Speaker 1: opportunity there. Um also Research in Motion, she suggested, as
Speaker 1: a possible take over our target. Research in Motion is
Speaker 1: hop ping this will turn things around. Research in Motion,
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcasts, has had a
Speaker 1: few rough quarters. Putting it lightly yep. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: have to remember Research Emotion was once the dominant company
Speaker 1: in the smartphone market in the United States in particular,
Speaker 1: like that was the one that all the executives would
Speaker 1: go for. You would hear the story about the Crackberries,
Speaker 1: where executives were addicted to using the smartphone because it
Speaker 1: was so compelling. Well, that was before it the smartphone
Speaker 1: had really started to creep into the consumer market. It
Speaker 1: was definitely before Steve Jobs had introduced the iPhone, which
Speaker 1: opened up the floodgates. Um. And of course for a
Speaker 1: while it was the enterprise security level kept BlackBerry in
Speaker 1: its position, right, Yeah, because everything is encrypted and it's
Speaker 1: all passing through specific servers owned by RIM. Although that
Speaker 1: did cause some problems in various industries because RIM is
Speaker 1: a Canadian company and if you're talking about the United
Speaker 1: States company. Uh, some executives and some I T professionals
Speaker 1: a little nervous about the fact that their information was
Speaker 1: passing through the servers in a different country. But rem
Speaker 1: has built a reputation on being reliable and encrypted and safe,
Speaker 1: so it was able to move beyond that. In most cases,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know who else is benefiting or
Speaker 1: might benefit if Google standardized more on the Motorola hardware platform.
Speaker 1: What's developers? And I'll only say that once because I'm
Speaker 1: not Steve Bomber, right, Um, because the very thing. You
Speaker 1: know a lot of people who don't like Apple products
Speaker 1: because they're closed off and prefer Microsoft or Linux or
Speaker 1: for phones Android. Um, they like the fact that these
Speaker 1: things are open, that they have multiple marketplaces, multiple options
Speaker 1: to buy their software from. They say it's more open.
Speaker 1: But the thing that it's two sided coin, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The challenge is the fact that there are so many
Speaker 1: different variations of Android out on the market that developing
Speaker 1: in an appu means that you either have to make
Speaker 1: it as general as possible to hit as many of
Speaker 1: those operating systems, and to work properly on as many
Speaker 1: of those operating systems as possible, or you just right
Speaker 1: off a percentage of your of your potential audience and
Speaker 1: develop for the latest operating system or the latest couple
Speaker 1: of versions of that operating system, because Google does release
Speaker 1: updates to Android and the you know, you want to
Speaker 1: develop for the newest version of whatever the operating system is,
Speaker 1: because that's probably going to give you the most advanced features.
Speaker 1: It's going to give you access to the resources that
Speaker 1: you want to make a truly compelling app. Well you
Speaker 1: you hope for that, Yeah, that's I mean, you could
Speaker 1: aim to create an app that is much more basic
Speaker 1: and and really goes after very simple elements of the
Speaker 1: operating system. Uh, and there's nothing wrong with that, But
Speaker 1: the temptation is of course to develop something that's really
Speaker 1: cutting edge that pushes the envelope. And so the problem
Speaker 1: is that Google doesn't have any control over which hand
Speaker 1: sets and which carriers update the operating system. Like they
Speaker 1: don't have Google can't schedule that. Google can can release
Speaker 1: an update to the operating system, but it's up to
Speaker 1: the carriers to actually push that out to users. So
Speaker 1: you could be stuck with an Android phone that could
Speaker 1: be theoretically based on its hardware capable of running the
Speaker 1: latest operating system, but you're stuck a version or two
Speaker 1: versions or more behind the current one because the many
Speaker 1: the carrier hasn't pushed that update out. So that means
Speaker 1: that as a developer, you have, instead of one operating
Speaker 1: system to develop for, you've got six different versions of
Speaker 1: that operating system to develop for. And if you want
Speaker 1: your app to be usable across all Android devices, you
Speaker 1: have to take that into account when you're building your app,
Speaker 1: So you can't build in those super cool futuristic features
Speaker 1: without leaving behind a good portion of the people who
Speaker 1: own Android app um Android devices. So hopefully by purchasing
Speaker 1: Motorola Mobility, Google will have a little more control in
Speaker 1: UH and keeping a nice standard build of the operating system,
Speaker 1: and other hopefully carriers and and and handset manufacturers will
Speaker 1: follow suit and incorporate that into their devices so that
Speaker 1: the experience is more level across the board. Now, if
Speaker 1: you own something that cannot run the latest version of
Speaker 1: that operating system because it just does not have the
Speaker 1: hardware necessary to do it, you're still going to be
Speaker 1: out of luck. But that's just like any other computer system.
Speaker 1: If I go out and buy an old old, old computer.
Speaker 1: It's not going to have the resources necessary to run
Speaker 1: a modern operating system like a current version of an
Speaker 1: operating system on it, because it's just it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the horsepower. But that you know, that's the nature of technology.
Speaker 1: You just don't want to be left behind, seemingly arbitrarily
Speaker 1: knowing that your device could run this stuff but for
Speaker 1: some reason doesn't. That's really irritating, both from a consumer
Speaker 1: perspective and a developer perspective. Yep UM. And then there
Speaker 1: were in the days that followed the initial freak outage
Speaker 1: of the the deal, the revel people just I think
Speaker 1: once they stopped, you know, thinking about what would happen
Speaker 1: with the other developers, they started thinking about the other
Speaker 1: stuff that Motorola Mobility does UM, part of which is
Speaker 1: it brings in a whole lot of money for Motorola
Speaker 1: or used to or won't won't soon will for Google um,
Speaker 1: so it's another source of revenue UM. And in addition,
Speaker 1: they make stuff other than phones, like set top boxes
Speaker 1: for TVs, and this could be the next step in
Speaker 1: in implementing Google TV, yes, which has It's funny because
Speaker 1: I see reviews of Google TV people who have actually
Speaker 1: used it, and they tend to be fairly positive at
Speaker 1: least of the potential for Google TV. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that's holding Google TV back, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that has to do with content deals, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's a whole different podcasts. But but the but
Speaker 1: the fact that they have a company now that produces
Speaker 1: set top boxes could mean that there's a tighter integration
Speaker 1: with that and we might see some pretty innovative UH
Speaker 1: home entertainment systems with Google technology built directly into them
Speaker 1: that we'll hit the market in the next few years.
Speaker 1: And then there's UH in dash navigation systems for cars,
Speaker 1: although really, I mean smartphones are starting to really take
Speaker 1: a bite out of those, sure, but you could have
Speaker 1: greater integration if you had an Android phone and you
Speaker 1: had Android in your dash. Yeah. I can even see
Speaker 1: that becoming because even more complex where you start getting
Speaker 1: agreements with specific car manufacturers where that's built in, like
Speaker 1: it's not an aftermarket thing, but it's built in at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. And so you go out and you
Speaker 1: buy your new car, and that car happens to have
Speaker 1: a Google Android system built into it. And if you
Speaker 1: happen to have an Android smartphone. Then you've got automatic
Speaker 1: integration between those two. That means it's a very compelling device. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is an area in which Apple is
Speaker 1: not active, but Microsoft is um and this is I'm
Speaker 1: sure that just makes Microsoft even happier about the deal
Speaker 1: than they already weren't um you know, because this is
Speaker 1: this is a place where I I don't know that
Speaker 1: anybody else had the clout of a Microsoft. I think
Speaker 1: it was you know, car by car Um. So this
Speaker 1: is this is gonna be scary because Google's got a
Speaker 1: lot of weight it can throw behind those um So,
Speaker 1: I mean there there's there's more to this deal than
Speaker 1: just the patents and just the effect of the on
Speaker 1: the manufacturers of phones. I mean this this really has
Speaker 1: some far reaching implications, and it might push Google's competitors
Speaker 1: in in different ways. I've even seen suggestions that perhaps
Speaker 1: the Google Motorola acquisition could end up getting well it's
Speaker 1: going to get a lot of scrutiny, but it could
Speaker 1: potentially raise questions of antitrust laws and uh and that's
Speaker 1: a little tricky because you look at Google and you
Speaker 1: look at Motorole Mobility and at first blush these two
Speaker 1: companies don't seem to have a lot of overlapping uh
Speaker 1: areas of products. You know, it just doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it it would be that big a deal. But then
Speaker 1: you take into account the whole operating system for mobile devices,
Speaker 1: and if Google is targeted for antitrust, then the question is, well,
Speaker 1: how does that How is it possible for Apple to
Speaker 1: have its own line of products with its own operating
Speaker 1: system that is not available on anything else? How can
Speaker 1: that be possible? But the Google Motorola acquisition isn't. And
Speaker 1: I mean it's just one of these conversations that spirals
Speaker 1: and spirals outward and you start to question why you
Speaker 1: even got up in the morning typical Friday for me.
Speaker 1: Really well now and it's just, um, you know, there's there.
Speaker 1: This is one of those onions of of news because
Speaker 1: there's just so many different layers to it. But not
Speaker 1: the onion, not the onion, which would still be hilarious. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, this is it's fascinating stuff because
Speaker 1: this really does have some pretty far reaching implications of
Speaker 1: just the ones on the surface, and um, you know
Speaker 1: the rest of the world didn't necessarily latch onto them
Speaker 1: and immediately but I would bet that Google had some
Speaker 1: of this other stuff in mind when it completed the acquisition.
Speaker 1: You know, there are lots and lots of things that
Speaker 1: that these two companies can do well together provided the
Speaker 1: merger goes through. A merger acquisition is allowed to proceed.
Speaker 1: So because it's not a done deal yet, no, we
Speaker 1: talked about almost like it is, but that's really this
Speaker 1: is an announcement, it's an intention, and everyone's reacting to
Speaker 1: it as if it's as if everything's been signed and sealed,
Speaker 1: But in truth, things may still fall apart for this deal.
Speaker 1: We've seen some pretty major deals get some serious opposition
Speaker 1: recently in the news, so it wouldn't be a surprise
Speaker 1: to see that sort of at least the at least
Speaker 1: scrutiny towards the deal, if not opposition. So we'll have
Speaker 1: to keep our eyes on this and see how it develops.
Speaker 1: But really interesting discussion here. Not everything in technology is
Speaker 1: all based on circuitry and software and and electricity. Some
Speaker 1: of it's based on on corporate policy, CE and finance
Speaker 1: and politics and property intellectual property. And I find this
Speaker 1: just as interesting to me as as you know, stuff
Speaker 1: that beeps. So, guys, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics that we should tackle here on tech stuff, let
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