The Motorola you know today will be the same Motorola even though it’s now owned by Google…well, more or less.
Google has already made a few drastic changes since acquiring Motorola Mobility last year, like kicking out the company’s existing CEO Sanjay Jha for someone on Google’s advertising team. But for the most part, the search giant is going to let the Motorola team run independently of the Android team.
At the Mobile World Congress, Google’s Android head Andy Rubin was quoted as saying he has “nothing to do with” the Motorola team. “I don’t even know who’s running it.”
“They’re going to continue building Motorola branded devices and it’s going to be the same team doing it,” he added.
The decision to keep the Motorola side of things separate from the rest of Google’s mobile division is no doubt a response to concerns that Motorola would become the favored manufacturer, and other Android device makers would get the short end of the stick.
Just imagine if Microsoft started making its own branded computers. Those devices would come with a kind of consumer guarantee that other Windows PC manufacturers simply can’t offer, and they probably wouldn’t like that very much.
Google has already faced this issue on some level, with the Nexus brand of Android phones, which Google has an active hand in developing. The Nexus phones are always the first to get Android software updates and get a level of support unmatched by other handsets. Google, however, has not chosen a specific manufacturer to be the face of the Nexus brand. Different Nexus phones have been made by different companies.
It’s “physically difficult for me to advantage somebody,” Rubin said.
