I can’t prove it, because I didn’t write about it, but I’ve thought for a long time now that Google buying Motorola Mobility made a lot of sense. It wasn’t my idea though. I give full credit to billionaire investor Carl Icahn. In July, Icahn said that Motorola should shop around its patent portfolio, in particular Motorola Mobility, to wireless technology companies such as Google. His proposal made sense to me, and, what’s important, it made sense to Google as well.
As Icahn said at the time, with 17,000 approved patents and another 7,500 in the pipeline, Motorola Mobility “has one of the strongest and most respected patent portfolios in the industry.” Sure, Google can build its own Android phones now, but so what? The real value here for Google is in those patents.