Google buying Motorola

So Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5B. If you are a partner of Google using Android then this has both upside and downside. The upside is that Motorola, having been in wireless for longer than almost anyone, presumably has a pretty good patent portfolio that can be used to defend against Apple, Nokia, Microsoft et al. The downside, of course, is that now Google has its own in-house handset company competing with you, and although right now they claim they will keep the playing field level, in the long run things don’t always work out that way.

For now the partners are putting positive spin on it. For instance, here is the CEO of Sony-Ericsson:“I welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.”

Everyone else is equally positive. But it could turn nasty if Motorola (don’t know if they are keeping the name) is either very successful (and therefore makes everyone else less successful) or unsuccessful (in which case Google will be tempted to give it an edge by getting a newer or better version of Android).