Google didn’t actually want the Nortel patents, just drove up the price

Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons makes some great points this morning regarding Google acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. First he talks about TechCrunch MG Siegler’s remarks that Google made themselves “look like huge asses in retrospect”. Lyons pretty much says Siegler’s opinions were just foolish. Lyons also makes an interesting point that Google most likely didn’t actually want the Nortel patents, they were just driving up the price for Apple and Microsoft with their PI (3.14 billion) bid.

And today it all makes sense. Google just sandbagged its rivals. The whole thing was a rope-a-dope maneuver. Google never cared about the Nortel patents. It just wanted to drive up the price so that AppleSoft (those happy new bedmates) would overpay. Today, with the Motorola deal, Google picks up nearly three times as many patents as AppleSoft got from Novell and Nortel. More important, Google just raised the stakes in a huge way for anyone who wants to stay in the smartphone market.

In the end of things, Google is earning 3 times the patents than they would have in the Nortel deal, but for three times the price. One last word from Lyons:

As for those crazy bids in the Nortel auction — that was just a way to leave a little “fuck you” in the paperwork for Google’s pals in Redmond and Cupertino to look back upon. That move is pure Larry Page. This is a smart, hyper-competitive guy with a mean streak and a nasty sense of humor.