Google stops sexting around, and commits

Google’s latest acquisition of Motorola Mobility was a surprise direct move in that they are now effectively competing against their partners in the mobile market, but the acquisition represents a consolidation trend amongst all tech companies as they jockey for position in a new environment defined by going social and local.

Google just bought 100% of 50% of the company I used to work for. The move was more than likely defensive, as some analysts say, because the Andy Rubin, the Senior VP of Mobile at Google (and head of Android), stated that they weren’t in the business of making mobile handsets. I still have to read more to understand the patent viewpoint, but regardless of the true causes, the effect is the same: consolidation amongst tech companies. Everybody’s doing it.

Amazon is competing with Apple over readers, and everybody else is competing with Amazon over cloud. Apple is competing with Google, Facebook, and all phone manufacturers over mobile, while Facebook is competing with Google over…everything. Microsoft was competing with Google, but now it’s a Microsoft/Facebook alliance against Microsoft’s old nemesis over the future of social search.

Having just released its Google+ platform, Google is now competing with basically every company out there, against Netflix & Facebook (via YouTube), against Apple (via Android), against Yelp and FourSquare (via Google Places), against Groupon (same), against Twitter (via Google+), and practically everybody else over controlling Internet usage in the future, with the stake now being over a key component of everybody’s lives in the future: mobile computing.

When Facebook was competing with Google, my opinion was that ultimately Google would win. It had a broader scope (search) to warrant the various businesses that it held, and going social would represent an easier justification than what Facebook was trying to do, which was be THE social search component of the future. Also, basically, Google is just more of an innovative corporate culture, whereas Facebook leveraged Mark Zuckerberg’s direction (the whole CEO cult dynamic) to get where it is right now. I remember hearing about Facebook launching an email service, and thinking about why I didn’t consider that move sooner, but then again they had to compete against GMail, an already established email alternative. The point of the matter was to become the nexus of consumer activity in the future, with all things centered around being social, or basically an active sharer of information and content over the internet (whether making recommendations, writing articles like what you are seeing now, or searching for services). It’s to be social, and local.

Takeaways from all this activity,

I’m wondering how consumer spending, though, will stall all this activity, or whether the companies will start consolidating heavily during the recessionary period. Mobile spending should drop with the economic problems we are having, and that would impact a now more directly involved Google, as well as their other competitors. But, again, Google is more broadly scoped, and can better handle the ups and downs.
Microsoft should outright buy Facebook, or Facebook should outright buy Microsoft. Microsoft has their famous cash on hand, while Facebook can diversify away from just being a social site. Continuing on, Facebook should create a business alliance via the fledgling lone businesses (Groupon, Yelp, FourSquare), and combine their efforts against their consolidated new competitor. These companies represent existing user bases, and while individually they have their share of strengths and weaknesses, combined those weaknesses are lessened. With Google, their efforts are mostly in the infancy stage, but with wider adoption of their Google+ platform possible, and with the current foray into direct mobile production, their reach would only grow.
Motorola Mobility, however, got lucky. They never recovered from their RAZR-era, and they got saved from the guillotine. I worked in Motorola Solutions, and the big news during that time was the underperformance of Motorola Mobility, which was disappointing to me because I loved that RAZR, even when they diluted it with that horrible ROCKR, or whatever else they called the other models.
Apple failed in both their cloud computing (MobileMe), as well as their attempts into social networking (Ping). They are, though, the most valuable company on the planet, and should use that position to continue its natural brand extensions allowed via mobile and tablet computing. This would mean competing against education outreach efforts by Amazon, which represent another small foothold within a future consumer base (millenial students). With a broader scope allowed by its work within computing and mobile, along with its stylistic marketing message, the combination of an Amazon/Apple merger, or buyout, are good for the long-term. Both represent strengths in their respective fields, but combined instead of competing, both can stop the unnecessary skirmishing and leverage each other’s strengths to continue to move further along the scale of where consumer activity is going to be. However, this is more beneficial for Amazon than Apple, since Amazon still has a lot of work to do to be where the competitors lie. The possibility of this working, however, depends on the ego’s of their respective founders, so I would expect more traction when either Bezos or Jobs is not CEO*. Both companies complement each other greatly, it’s just too hard to pass up a combination.
What happened to you, Yahoo?
it remains to be said that Groupon’s decision not to accept Google’s $6B buyout was probably the dumbest move known to man. Groupon is basically a niche business model, and those niche business models die out fast. Even if what it possibly represented was true, and that Groupon had the potential to be the Google of small businesses, it’s balance sheet didn’t warrant a stronger position. While revenue is increasing for the firm, its business accounting tactics, its whole business model, is shaky. If it was me, for $6B, I would have said yes before Google’s offer was even printed by their lawyers. I would have rented an airplane that wrote “YES” on the sky outside of their headquarters, and have invited everybody for the wedding. To date, saying no to that offer is the most memorably stupid move during all this whole activity.
They should all hire me.

* Well, this’ll be interesting.