Sometime last year, Google quietly acquired a U.K. startup doing rather interesting work with sound, including a new type of speaker and haptic feedback. This technology has interesting ramifications and possible uses in Google’s consumer lineup.
Computer peripheral company Logitech has today announced that it is acquiring popular audio company Jaybird. Jaybird, for those unfamiliar, has released a variety of headphone products over recent years, most of which have been wireless. Logitech says the deal is worth $50 million in cash, with an additional earn-out of up to $45 million based on achievement of growth targets over the next two years.
Popular accessory maker Zagg today announced that it has acquired Mophie, another accessory maker best known for its battery cases and power accessories. The deal will see Zagg purchase Mophie for $100 million. Mophie CEO Daniel Huang and COO Shawn Dougherty will continue their current respective roles and will report to Zagg CEO Randy Hales.
Sony will be acquiring an Israeli chip maker called Altair Semiconductor for $212 million, the handset maker announced in an official press release this week. Altair Semiconductor is known for its advancements with LTE (Long Term Evolution) modems. They’ve been working on making LTE chips that are faster, with lower power consumption, all while at a lower cost. This possibly means that Sony can deploy LTE technology to markets that may not have it as of yet. The acquisition is slated to be all wrapped up early by February 2016, just a few weeks away.
According to a report from The Information, Google has made efforts in recent months to purchase the Impossible Foods startup. For those unfamiliar, Impossible Foods has been developing a cheeseburger made entirely out of plants, but that tastes and looks like one made out of ground beef.
CrowdOptic is one of the most well-established of the 10 current Glass for Work parters, and now the company is in acquisition talks. According to people familiar with the matter, the company has been in advanced discussions with a Fortune 500 firm that intends to build software applications for the upcoming iteration of enterprise-focused Google Glass hardware… Expand
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Following a report on Friday morning from Reuters, rumors began flying about a potential ASUS acquisition of struggling HTC. The original report was clear, with ASUS Chief Financial Officer David Chang quoted as saying that “the chances of an actual takeover are not big…” This morning, however, HTC has come out to say matter-of-factly that it “will not consider the acquisition.”
We strongly deny the news. We didn’t contact Asusteck[sic] and will not consider the acquisition. As an international brand, HTC will continue to design world-class innovative smart devices through its pursuit of brilliance brand promise.
HTC has been struggling over the last few years, and the problems have been amplified as of late following the company’s launch of its lackluster HTC One M9 smartphone. HTC CEO Cher Wang came out to apologize publicly for the company’s poor performance earlier this year, and it slashed its performance guidance for the April-June quarter following a 20% drop in its stock early last week.
Okay, we know what you’re probably thinking – that of course he’d want Google to buy Twitter, as he’s a shareholder, and a particularly large one in Twitter, at that – and as such has a large financial interest in its success. But Chris Sacca, who has worked as the Head of Special Initiatives at Google, is a smart guy with early investments in a lot of now-successful companies including Uber, Instagram, Bitly, and many more. And he thinks that Twitter and Google would be mutually benefited if they were married together as one.
Samsung announced in a press release this evening that it has purchased LoopPay, an Apple Pay like mobile payment company. LoopPay turns existing magnetic stripe card readers into secure, contactless receivers. This means that, in an ideal world, LoopPay would be available in nearly every retailer that accepts magnetic strip cards. A specific acquisition price is unclear at this point.
An app called Odysee has been acquired by Google, and the “Platform Team” behind it will be joining the Google+ team. The app, while definitely not all too well known, let users automatically back up their photos and videos from their smartphones to the cloud as well as a home computer.
The team will continue to work on “building amazing products” at Google, but it’s not exactly clear yet what the team is going to be doing—or what parts of Odysee may or may not be making it into Google+. Auto-upload of photos to Google+ has been pushed in the company’s official app for quite some time now, so maybe the team is coming on board to flesh out and expand that functionality of the service… Expand
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It appears that Google is about ready to jump into the kid-friendly mobile app space, as Launchpad toys has today announced that they’ve been acquired by the Mountain View company. Known for its Toontastic storytelling app for kids, the company is joining Google to “create even more amazing creativity tools for kids.”
While rumors that Samsung was in talks to acquire BlackBerry for as much as $7.5 billion ultimately proved to be untrue, the two smartphone makers remain interested in working with one another. “We want to work with BlackBerry and develop this partnership, not acquire the company,” J.K. Shin, head of Samsung’s mobile phone business, told The Wall Street Journal. Expand
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RelativeWave, the company behind the mobile app prototyping software Form, today announced it’s joining Google. The company made an announcement on its website noting that it will continue working on the Form app and as of today make it available for free through the Mac App Store. The app previously sold for $79. Expand
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Google reportedly purchased six office buildings from Starwood Capital Group LLC and Blackstone Group LP for $585 million, according to Bloomberg. The facilities are located at the Pacific Shores Center office park in Redwood City, California and are about 11 miles away from the search giant’s Mountain View headquarters.
Google has acquired Lift Labs, a San Francisco company that has developed eating utensils that provide “proactive care” for people with essential tremor and Parkinson’s Disease. A Google spokesperson confirmed the deal with The New York Times, saying that the company will be rolled into the search giant’s Life Sciences unit, which is part of its super secret Google X lab.
Google announced on Tuesday that it has acquired cloud-based visual effects company Zync, which provided the rendering technology behind the movies Star Trek Into Darkness and Looper. Zync will be joining the Google Cloud Platform team, bolstering the company’s cloud-based offerings for creative professionals.
Zync Render is an in-house tool that provides integrated image rendering for visual effects professionals, offering users flexible solutions and greater creative freedoms with decreased longterm overhead and startup costs. The rendering tool has been used by over a dozen feature films and hundreds of commercials. Expand
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Google is acquiring Gecko Design, a firm that helps develop products for companies like Hewlett-Packard, Slingmedia, Dell, Fitbit and furniture maker Herman Miller. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed but the Los Gatos, California company will be rolled into Google’s X lab, which is responsible for items like Glass and the search giant’s driverless car.
Google has acquired Jetpac, a city guide application for iPhone, the app’s developers announced today (via The Next Web). The free app (and others by the Jetpac team) will be removed from the App Store in the coming days, and the service that powers it will be shut down on September 15th.
Google hasn’t said exactly what it plans to do with the company’s technology, which automatically scans users’ photos to detect local points of interest like coffee shops or “hipster hangouts.” The service featuerd data for over 6,000 cities, according to the App Store description. It seems logical, however, that Google would attempt to integrate these features with Google Maps or a location-based Google Now feature.
You can grab the Jetpac app for free on the iTunes Store, though it won’t be very useful beyond its mid-September shutdown.
YouTube has acquired a startup called Directr according to a post on the company’s website, as noted by the Wall Street Journal. Directr is a startup that makes two iOS apps for video creation—one focused on everyday users, and the other designed with small business marketing videos in mind.
The company says that for now, “everything you love about Directr is staying the same.” Directr’s current employees, however, will be joining the YouTube video ads team. Neither party has said how much the buyout cost yet, but Directr has confirmed that despite the change of ownership, it will continue to offer its current apps, which will now be available for free.
According to VentureBeat, citing sources familiar with the matter, Google has reached an agreement with Twitch to acquire the live streaming video platform for $1 billion. While the deal appears to have been finalized, the two companies have yet to make a formal announcement regarding the acquisition. Google’s YouTube division is reportedly in charge of the acquisition. Expand
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Google has acquired 3D graphics firm drawElements, which offers cutting-edge GPU quality analysis solutions. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although ArcticStartup reports that it has narrowed down the dollar value to eight figures. Expand
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According to a report from TechCrunch, Samsung is in talks with SmartThings to acquire the smart home platform for around $200 million. The report originally claimed that the deal was completed, but TechCrunch has since updated the report to note a second source says the talks are still ongoing.
SmartThings is a home automation platform that enables Android and iOS users to effortlessly control their home from one simple app, including lights, locks, electronics, appliances and other connected home devices. The app can also detect motion, alert you of danger and monitor how many family members are home at any given time. Expand
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According to a new report out of the Wall Street Jounral, speech and dictation service Nuance Communications has held acquisition talks with Samsung and has been exploring the possibility of a sale. It is widely speculated that the Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is powered by Nuance in the back-end. Samsung started partnering with Nuance late in 2013 for the voice recognition functionalities on its Galaxy Gear smart watch and Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.
After several months of rumors, Sprint is reportedly finally nearing a deal to acquire T-Mobile USA. The two have reportedly been in negotiations for awhile now, but they have apparently finally reached an agreeable number. The deal, as it stands now, would have Sprint acquiring the Uncarrier for $31.3 billion. T-Mobile currently has about $15 billion in debt and $5 billion in cash. Sprint is valuing the company at roughly $40 a share.
In its first non-luggage acquisition, Samsonite announced thursday that it is buying Speck products, maker of cases for a wide variety of mobile devices, for $85 million (via re/code). Expand
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Google may acquire Skybox Imaging, a company with experience in taking incredibly detailed, high-resolution aerial satellite photos, according to TechCrunch. The purchase may cost Google in excess of $1 billion, though that number is fairly common anymore. Expand
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is purchasing Divide, a company that builds mobile device management software for enterprise customers. Divide confirmed the deal in an announcement on its website saying it will be joining the Android team and that existing customers will continue to be able to access the service (above).
Divide provides a cloud-based service that lets companies and large organizations oversee and manage mobile devices used by employees on their networks. The software can create separate work environments on personal devices used by employees, offers a number of security features, and also supports both Android and iOS: Expand
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Google is taking a step towards advancing its e-commerce business, by purchasing London-based Rangespan, which has developed a unique tech that helps retailers forecast products and services that will be high in demand in the future.
A message on Rangespan’s website confirmed the buyout today. “We are very happy to announce that Rangespan is joining Google,” the company wrote. “We will continue to work on services for shoppers and retailers at Google, and we’re super excited about the opportunities to come. As part of the change, we will wind down Rangespan’s services. We’ve already begun working individually with each of our retailers and suppliers on this process.”
Reuters reports that Disney is about to buy Maker Studios, one of the largest YouTube networks, for $500 million with the possibility for that amount to rise to $950 million:
Maker, founded in 2009, helps produce and distribute videos to more than 380 million subscribers worldwide across more than 55,000 channels. Its videos now collectively garner some 5.5 billion views every month, according to the source.
The company distributes content through partnerships it has with a long list of YouTube content creators such as the popular PewDiePie gaming channel and also provides a platform that gives creators access to royalty reporting, analytics, and other services to help maximize earnings.
Google today announced on its DoubleClick blog that it has acquired spider.io, a company that has been developing technology to fight online fraud related to advertisements. While noting that it has also been investing in developing its own technologies to fight fraud, Google said it would first implement spider.io’s technology into its video and display ad products to help detect fraudulent activity:
Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts.
Google adds that the long-term goal for the technology it acquired is to provide advertisers and publishers with more accurate methods of measuring a campaign’s results. “Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.”
More on the DoubleClick advertisers blog here.
Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang spoke to CNNMoney about his company’s recent acquisition of Motorola from Google today. In the interview, Yang was asked if his goal for Lenovo was to eventually catch up with more established competitors in the mobile space, such as Apple and Samsung.
With Motorola, Lenovo will be the No. 3 smartphone maker worldwide. Do you think your company can catch up with Apple or Samsung, who are still far ahead of you? And how long will it take?
Definitely, over time. Our mission is to surpass them.
Yang says that Lenovo’s smartphones will probably be released under the Motorola banner, a smart branding decision given Motorola’s existing name recognition and popularity in the U.S. and other countries.
The branding choice combined with the infrastructure and personnel from the Moto buyout could help propel the company to the top of the market, but it will be a hard road to the level of success that Yang is after—especially with Apple and Samsung already locked in a fierce, years-long battle for the top spot.
Throughout the interview, Yang continued to note that several decisions still need to be made with regards to how phones will be branded in certain countries and whether the Lenovo name will be associated with Motorola at all. It will certainly be interesting to see how Yang uses the Motorola brand to push Lenovo forward.
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Investors may be pleased by today’s news of Google’s Nest acquisition, but some Nest owners are far less enthused.
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Following today’s announcement that Google had bought the company behind the Nest learning thermostat, the Mountain View-based company has gained over $2B in after hours trading. Considering the fact that they only spent $3.2B on the acquisition, it looks like the folks at Google has made out pretty well today.
Reuters reports that Google is one of several companies currently considering a bid on part or all of Blackberry. The handset manufacturer has had a rough six years as they fell behind in the smartphone market to competitors like Apple and devices running Google’s Android operating system.
Flutter, the startup that created a gestured-based music controller for iTunes and Spotify, has been acquired by Google according to a splash page on the company’s website. The Flutter app used a computer’s webcam to detect hand gestures for starting, stopping, or switching songs on iOS, OS X, and Windows. Aside from iTunes and Spotify, Flutter is compatible with a variety other apps, including Quicktime Player, Rdio, and even Google Chrome.
Update: The acquisition has now been confirmed by Samsung. In a statement to the New York Times, the company had the following to say:
“Samsung has acquired key talent and assets from Boxee. This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices.”
According to a new report from Israeli business site The Marker (via The Jewish Press), Samsung has purchased Boxee, the company behind the home theater PC software and set-top box that lets users stream content on their TV and computer. The report claims that Samsung paid around $30 million for the company and will continue to employ Boxee’s 40 workers.
Boxee has been looking for a buyer or more funding for the past few months. It was reported last month that the company had found a buyer, but this is the first specific information we have heard about a possible acquisition.
Samsung is an interesting buyer for sure. More than likely, the company would use the team’s talent to improve its Smart TV software, but it’s also possible that the two companies could work on some sort of video streaming service, as well, possibly based off of Google TV. Expand
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According to a new report out of the Financial Times, Huawei is considering buying Finnish smartphone manufacturer Nokia. Richard Yu, Huawei’s consumer business group chairman explained at the company’s Ascend P6 launch event that Huawei is looking into the acquisition, but how far negotiations go would depend on the willingness of Nokia. “We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded,” Yu stated.
Huawei is not a household name here in the United States when it comes to smartphones, most likely due to the company’s shaky relationship with the U.S. government, but Yu says the company is certainly looking to take on the likes of Samsung and Apple, and having Nokia behind it would definitely be helpful. Expand
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Update: Following Google’s acquisition, Wavii has shut down its service and pulled its iOS app.
Google has purchased natural language processing engine Wavii for more than $30 million, according to TechCrunch.
The acquisition has several similarities to Yahoo’s recent purchase of Summly, which Yahoo integrated into its iOS app just yesterday, as both start-ups focused on parsing text from content and delivering summarized snippets of information.
Google just acquired marketing firm Channel Intelligence for $125 million in cash, according to a press release issued by the company’s parent company ICG Group (via BusinessInsider). The press release said the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of this year after passing the usual regulatory process.
As for what Google wants from the acquisition, Channel Intelligence said on its website that it “tracks online retail sales for a variety of verticals including computing, home improvement, appliances, consumer electronics, toys and other consumer packaged goods.” It also said that it makes “it easy for consumers to find and buy products online.” We can only speculate what Google will do with the technology, but we imagine it would play a role in the company’s ads and shopping businesses.
In an announcement on the Channel Intelligence website, the company noted it has “worked with Google for years” as a featured Google Shopping launch partner with a technology that helps to “maximize sales and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) with Product Listing Ads (PLAs)”:
A featured Google Shopping launch partner, CI has developed a technology to help merchants maximize sales and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) with Product Listing Ads (PLAs), which has become an increasingly important channel for merchants… CI excels at product feed optimization and product data is paramount for Google Shopping. The CI Managed Services team also employs unique Product Bidding methods to further enhance Google Shopping (PLA) performance; helping retailers generate qualified consumer visits and profitable product sales.
We are pleased to announce that Channel Intelligence (CI) has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!
For over ten years, we have focused on making it easy for consumers to find and buy products online and help our clients grow their business. We’ve worked with Google for years, and look forward to the great things we will be able to do together.
All CI services will continue to offer the excellent client service and great performance that our clients have come to expect over the years.
The CI Team
We reported on 9to5Mac in February that Apple acquired discovery app Chomp and was thought to be using the company’s technology to help improve the App Store and iTunes experience. We later confirmed Chomp’s CEO Ben Keighran and CTO Cathy Edwards already started working at Apple on the iTunes teams. Today, it appears Apple has shut down Chomp for Android with Chomp’s website now only listing links to iOS versions of the app, as noted by GigaOM.
The “Download Chomp” tab in the upper right corner of the Chomp.com now leads directly to the iTunes download page and only iPhone and iPad options are available for searching online. However, when searching for apps on the website, changing the platform to “Android” in the URL still allows you to view Android apps. As we noted earlier, Chomp helps power Verizon’s Android market, so it is unclear what will happen with that partnership going forward.
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Google must be napping to reenergize for its upcoming Motorola Mobility acquisition, because it has not completed a single buyout in 2012 despite purchasing 79 companies last year.
Google filed its 10-K with the SEC in January that revealed the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine spent $1.9 billion (including stock and cash) on 79 acquisitions in 2011. The more notable purchases were ITA Software for $676 million, and Apture, Katango, and Clever Sense. That means the Internet giant bought six to seven companies a month in 2011. In contrast, it obtained four companies a month in 2010 for a total 48 acquisitions worth $1 billion.
With that said, Google has not picked up a single company since Dec. 13, 2011—roughly four months since its last investment. If judging Google’s spending habits over the last two years, the firm should have already completed 16 to 28 buyouts in 2012 to bulk its portfolio of interests. The company still has time to flash its money, though, as it grabbed roughly 25 of those 2011 acquisitions after the year’s third quarter.
More information is available below.
Last week startup Clever Sense launched their local recommendations app called Alfred on the Android Market. Previously only available as an iOS app, the service uses a proprietary engine to make recommendations for nightlife, food, and other local attractions without requiring the user to enter a search query. Today, Clever Sense has announced on their website that they have been acquired by Google and their team will be joining Google’s to further develop the recommendation tech built into Alfred.
As for what might possibly come of the acquisition in terms of Google services, Clever Sense CEO Babak Pahlavan makes a point of mentioning “Google helps local businesses connect with potential customers and its worldwide presence can bring the value of Clever Sense to a much larger audience.” Perhaps Google services like Offers and Places will benefit, but the company has yet to make an official statement.
Below are the important bits from Clever Sense’s statement:
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According to a report from WSJ, Google is currently in talks with private-equity firms regarding potentially providing assistance in the purchase of Yahoo Inc.
The report mentions the possibility Google is simply trying to bid up the purchase price to make it a less attractive deal for other potential buyers including Microsoft. Yahoo is currently in talks with Microsoft and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board regarding a possible deal. Although, there are reasons Google might find owning a piece of Yahoo’s 700 million plus unique monthly visitors beneficial.
The most obvious is advertising. According to the report, “Google wants to help sell the ad space across Yahoo sites as Yahoo has struggled to get good prices for it”. WSJ mentions the ability to push Google+ on the Yahoo community, but more importantly, a deal would provide Google with access to ads displayed in content from ABC News and other current premium content partners of Yahoo. According to the source, Google is interested in “having deeper business relationships with such publishers”.
Citing a “person familiar with the matter”, WSJ’s sources claim that Google has talked with two undisclosed private-equity firms, and while no deal has been struck, many are already discussing potential antitrust investigations. Forbes just published a story focusing on the antitrust issues of a potential Yahoo purchase, outlining the obvious predicament:
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Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony is coming close to closing a deal with Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson to buy out their 50% stake of the Sony Ericsson brand. Sony Ericsson is currently the sixth largest mobile phone maker in the world, and Sony hopes to fully add them to their arsenal. As you can see in the graph after the break, Sony Ericsson’s market share has been declining rapidly in recent years.
While the talks could fall apart at any time, Sony Ericsson’s stake is estimated between $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion by analysts. Sony reportedly has high ambitions to regain the mobile phone market from primarily Apple and Google. For comparisons sake, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, but of course the Sony situation is a little different.
According to an SEC filing made by Motorola today (seen after the break), Motorola was able to get $3 billion more out of Google before they were acquired for $12 billion — even without any other bidders present. But it isn’t that simple.
Today’s report contradicts August’s, saying Andy Rubin actually assisted in the acquisition when he reached out to Motorola first. It was previously stated that Rubin has no knowledge of the acquisition until the buyout was close to being announced. Rubin and company reached out to Motorola to buy patents, after losing the Nortel deal according to the filing.
The story continues as follows: Motorola’s Sanjay Jha told Google that Motorola wouldn’t only sell patents, rather the whole Motorola Mobility sector. Motorola than rejected two of Google’s offers which were $30 and $37 a share respectively, until both companies finally settled on a final price of $40 per share. Google, it appears, was in a hurry to get the deal done and bid pretty close to Motorola was after in order to avoid going to a long, drawn out auction process.
SEC filing after the break:
AllThingsD is reporting this evening that Google will shutdown Slide, a company they acquired for $200 million last year. All of Slide’s products will be shutdown — except Prizes.org (via TechCrunch). While the rest of the Slide team will continue to work at Google, Slide’s found Max Levchin is leaving. A Google spokesperson told AllThingsD:
“Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best. Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”
Before being shutdown by Google, the Slide team was hard at work on Photovine, a photo sharing app that was released by Google just one week ago. The app was focused on sharing photos specific to a certain category, or vine, with the community. Sadly, Photovine will receiving the axe over the next few months — along with Slide’s other products like Disco and Pool Party. So why would Google kill off a part of their company that released something just a week ago.. and paid $200 million for?
Updated: Slide’s official blog post has gone up. Continue after the break..
You probably know by now that Google’s move to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion was seen as one specifically focused on acquiring their more than 17,000+ patents, many of which are thought to be key in protecting Android from other smartphone makers (Apple and Microsoft) in court. However, according to a report from Bloomberg, only 18 of those patents will be essential in fighting patent-infringement related cases against, namely, Apple.
According to CEO of ICAP Patent Brokerage Dean Becker (“global leader in intellectual property brokerage”) Google only needs a few of the 17000+ patents to protect it’s mobile IPs, he added:
“There are a lot of sweet patents in that portfolio…”- Dean Becker, ICAP Patent Brokerage
The patents cover a little bit of everything that we’ve come to expect from a smartphone; touch-screen gestures, antenna designs, location-based services, email,etc. Among some of the more notable patents that will certainly provide value when protecting Android include one from 2001 that details disabling a “touch sensitive” display that detects a user’s head in relation to the device to prevent accidental input (sound familiar?), another shows a feature that would allow users to control when their location data is sent over a network via GPS (lack of these types of features were recently the subject of debate at a senate judiciary hearing in May where Apple and Google were questioned on their practices in relation to user location data). Other noteworthy patents include one related to increasing data storage for users and others that detail features we see in most modern smartphones.
Motorola, even before being acquired by Google, was and still is involved in mobile related legal issues. Most recently Apple filed patent-infringement complaints with the ITC in October, and also sued the company in civil court for “a pattern of unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive conduct”. Claims which also mirror those of Microsoft. Motorola seems to be confident in their patents, however, by going after Apple in lawsuits on three separate occasions and filing their own complaint with the ITC.
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Shoot, I’d take a 63% return on my investment, wouldn’t you? It seem’s like a lot to us, but a Motorola shareholder thinks Google underpaid in their acquisition of the company Monday. The shareholder believes Google solely paid for the patents, and not the rest of the mobile phone business. To back up the shareholder’s statement, analytical firm Frost & Sullivan came up with the same conclusion. (Phandroid via ZDNet)
Motorola has a portfolio of 24,500 patents and patent applications that instantly bolsters Google’s strength in the IP war. Looking at some recent patent auctions and using some simple math can show why these patents were indeed the target of Google’s acquisition.
Continue after the break..