It’s huge news: Google and Motorola, joining forces to take over the mobile world. Okay, okay, it was also for the patents; there’s no denying the fact that any mobile company needs to have a good patent shield, thanks to our lovely, broken patent system. Back a number of weeks ago, we saw a huge bidding war over Nortel, mainly for their patent portfolio.Google threw their hat in the ring briefly, only to be almost immediately outbid by Apple. No shock there; what was surprising, however, was the fact that Google seemed to be going after these patents with minimal vigor. Why? I think our answer came today.

Google was, most likely, already in talks with Motorola on the merger we saw come to fruition today. Why on earth would Google want to spend precious time and effort going after a company that every mobile player in the industry was after, when they could quietly knock on Motorola’s back door and come in for tea? Everyone else was across the street, prying for the attention of the Nortel case; nobody even saw Google slip away.

With the patent wars heating up, this was, ultimately a smart move for Google. Not only does this gain them the patent portfolio of the company that gave Android one of the boosts it needed with their wildly popular Droid line, but it gives them exclusive access to a manufacturer, which has been the big thing missing from Google’s repertoire. There’s one thing this writer knows for sure: he’s excited to see what comes of the merger. Motorola’s days of locked bootloaders and anti-development (as of late) will more than likely be coming to an end, and there’s some really cool stuff on the horizon. We’ll just have to wait for sunrise to see what it is.