Google One Step Closer to Back Office with Motorola Mobility Buy

How boring that the biggest, most surprising and potentially market-shaping acquisition in recent memory is about little more than patents. Ho-hum.

We in the back office space don’t care all that much about the device wars and even less about the nitpicking that goes on behind the scenes between buttoned-down patent attorneys and their fine-tooth combs. We care about enabling the grand visions of companies like Google and Motorola and making them sticky and profitable. So our excitement over this monumental acquisition may have to wait.

There is so much to iron out in the courtrooms that it may take some time before Google realizes what an absolute treasure it has in Motorola, not exactly untapped treasure, but slightly tarnished, dingy, half-forgotten. A few network guys at Google may go rummaging down in the basement some day, dust it off, hold it to the light and say, “Wow."

Why just think about what Google can do for Motorola’s BSS/OSS business … oh wait … Motorola Mobility no longer has a BSS/OSS business. It spun that division off in January. Dang, it would have been fun to watch Google learn a little about network management and in turn show the BSS group how things are really done in real time.

It looks like the software sector will miss out on all the fun, except for some interesting device-management innovation that may pop up.  But perhaps we can watch the clashes of culture and business process incompatibility between the Internet jackrabbits of Google and the testing and assembling mentality of device and equipment manufacturers. And we can watch how the mindset of Motorola employees, used to squeaking out every penny of profit from a manufacturing process, blends with the “lets just do it" mentality of Googleites and hope there’s some opportunity for business process management consulting gigs in there somewhere.

Google says it will run Motorola like a separate company, but how long, really, can the young bucks at Google stomach watching an old product company plod along without thinking they need to step in and “fix" it? And in the long run, it still brings Google one step closer to the back office and won’t it be fun to have them in our little corner of the world?

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com.