• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, August 18, 2011

When Google announced Monday that it was buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion and change, virtually every trade and business journalist and blogger in the world opined in one way or another about Google's true motivations for pursuing the deal. I have my own ideas:

1.     It REALLY is about Motorola's 17,000 or so patents. Yes. It's a boring reason, and an unfortunate consequence of a U.S. patent system run amuck and lost its way, but Google needs a portfolio of mobile-related patents to defend itself against attacks from Apple and Microsoft and the myriad of patent trolls out there.

2.     Timing:  regulators are focusing on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. When you're a company that is dominant in your market and is under the constant scrutiny of antitrust regulators, the best time to push through a big deal is when others in the market are doing a deal that's three-and-one-half times your size.

3.     Couldn't buy Apple. Duh. What Google really wants is to own Apple, but even Exxon Mobile can't afford Steve Jobs' baby now.

4.     Larry Page was desperate to secure a lifetime supply of StarTAC phones. Apparently, Larry is addicted to the iconic StarTAC phone (he mentions it several times in his blog post announcing the deal) and StarTACs in good condition are impossible to find on eBay any more. As soon as he learned that Motorola had several cases of brand new StarTACs in original packaging in one of its warehouses, he fired over a $12.5 billion term sheet for the company.

5.     Couldn't buy Nokia. Stephen Elop, Microsoft plant and current Nokia CEO, had already put a poison pill in place with an exclusive license of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system. Well done, Mr. Ballmer.

6.     Canadians wouldn't let Google buy RIM. Yes, it's true: in a tit-for-tat retaliation against the use of the Arms Export Act to deny Canadians access to secure encryption technology, the Canadian Department of National Defence peremptorily blocked Google from acquiring the Waterloo, Ontario-based company.

7.     Kodak wanted too much for its patent portfolio. Having failed time and time again to create new businesses to replace its dying chemical-based photography business, the company that invented or pioneered much of the imaging industry we know today has decided that its best opportunity going forward is as a patent licenser and litigator. It's new at it at this point, and didn't want to take Google's first offer.

8.     Google wanted vintage Motorola AM radios for its self-driving cars. Apparently riding in a self-driving car can be an unnerving experience for passengers, particularly in heavy traffic and high-speed situations. After extensive work with focus groups, Google learned that not only is fiddling with old-fashioned radio knobs while searching for stations an excellent way to distract car passengers from the helplessness of robotic control of your car -- but the visual impact of the "Motorola" brand on the vehicle's dashboard was very soothing to subjects, taking many of them back to pleasant memories from their childhoods.

9.     Google thought owning a campus in central Illinois would help it in Washington. Google principals are quite aware that most of their U.S. employees are located relatively close to the coasts, and they wanted to gain political support from fly-over state legislators. They didn't want to go as far as Boeing did when it moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, so they did the next big thing. They bought a corporate campus in Libertyville, Ill.  (a name even Tea Party candidates have to love) complete with 3,000 employees.

10.  Google is sitting on a lot of cash that it needs to do something with. Google has the better part of $40 billion in cash on hand, and is generating new cash hand-over-fist in its very profitable search ad business. It needs to do something with that money, and its founders like to be different, so buying Motorola was the best alternative to either paying a dividend or buying back their stock.

What do you think? Why does Google want to buy Motorola?