Andy Rubin Attempts to Allay Fears About Motorola Buyout and Android Future

dgstorm

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andy_rubin-buyout-firewall.jpeg

Over the past few weeks many Android fans have been conversing with one another regarding the Google buyout of Motorola. There are those that are concerned that it could eventually hurt the Android ecosystem in the future by alienating some of the other OEMs. Andy Rubin has come forward recently with some statements that are designed to help alleviate any concerns regarding this topic. According to Mr. Rubin, Google's open-source philosophy remains the driving force behind the way they intend to continue developing Android. He further elaborated that Google has "literally built a firewall" between itself and Motorola.

While we could easily debate that Mr. Rubin needs to recheck his understanding of the word "literal" (as I highly doubt that they are literally having a fire-resistant wall erected), it is still appreciated to hear about Google's intentions regarding the acquisition. Mr. Rubin continued with,

“I don’t even know anything about their products, I haven’t seen anything. They’re going to continue building Motorola branded devices and it’s going to be the same team doing it.”

In fact, when asked if Motorola was going to continue to create their own UI overlay for Android, Mr. Rubin indicated that it was not his business and that the Motorola team would decide that. He continued with with,

"They're separate from me, and I'm going to continue to do my thing."

Mr. Rubin went a step further and elaborated the following, in reference to Motorola's single digit marketshare at the moment,

“Even if I was completely insane, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to think that we could get Motorola to be 90 plus percent marketshare and compete with the huge field of Android vendors. It just isn’t gonna happen.”[/quote]

So, in a way, it almost makes sense that Google replaced Sanjay Jha with Dennis Woodside. If Mr. Jha were still in place, then he would be tempted to ask for special concessions from Google regarding Android releases. With a trusted Google executive in charge of Moto, that makes a biased situation a bit less likely. Congratulations Mr. Woodside! You get to be an organic "figurative" firewall!

What do you guys think of this? Does it allay your fears regarding the potential for nepotism after the buyout?

Source: PhanDroid
 

jroc

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What I don't get is Nokia and ms are basically married and Nokia in a recent article became the largest manufacture of wp7 phones...IIRC.

Are Samsung, htc, and others that make Android phones not worried about that?

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Tonik

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So, in a way, it almost makes sense that Google replaced Sanjay Jha with Dennis Woodside. If Mr. Jha were still in place, then he would be tempted to ask for special concessions from Google regarding Android releases. With a trusted Google executive in charge of Moto, that makes a biased situation a bit less likely. Congratulations Mr. Woodside! You get to be an organic "figurative" firewall!

I don't believe Google is going to give Moto any special considerations over the other OEM's but the above statement just isn't a sound conclusion. It could just as easily be argued that Jha was replaced by an Google insider so that special treatment of Moto by Google could more easily be accomplished. Again, I don't believe that is going to happen, I just don't think you can read anything into the replacement other than they replaced the CEO of an under performing company they just bought. If they had bought any under performing company...say General Motors....of course they would replace the management with their team. A team that knows the Google way to success.
 

galaxieman63

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There's another kind of firewall

It is quite possible he was literally referring to a network firewall. It is common practice to lay out network design and do preparatory configuration in advance of an acquisition closing. It is also common practice to implement firewalls to restrict network access between parent and subsidiary.
 

2THEXTRM

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I find it hard to believe a corporate buy out/takeover by Google, Inc. of Motorola was not thought out down to the letter with a 1,000 page plan in place by Google, Mr. Rubin seems to not know very much about Motorola after his company just spent a boatload of cash to aquire it. Stonewalling comes to mind. I hope they have more of a handle on Motorola's affairs, as they need help to move forward and be profitable and have a solid direction to improve customer relations.
 
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dgstorm

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I don't believe Google is going to give Moto any special considerations over the other OEM's but the above statement just isn't a sound conclusion. It could just as easily be argued that Jha was replaced by an Google insider so that special treatment of Moto by Google could more easily be accomplished. Again, I don't believe that is going to happen, I just don't think you can read anything into the replacement other than they replaced the CEO of an under performing company they just bought. If they had bought any under performing company...say General Motors....of course they would replace the management with their team. A team that knows the Google way to success.

I purposefully made my argument in the article with the knowledge that the opposite could also be true. I knew that one of our astute readers would point out that it could go the other way as well. Nice job on being the first! :)

On the flip-side, this doesn't invalidate my assertion, nor does it invalidate yours. In fact, you even said yourself that you don't believe that your assertion will happen. Ultimately, based upon what we have been told by Google and Andy Rubin, and based upon the logic of Google wanting to keep things separate to make things more fair for the other OEMs, I think it is slightly more logical to conclude that there are multiple reasons they made their decision, and I fully admit that I am jumping to conclusions when asserting that Woodside will be a human firewall. It made for a bit of humor in the story.

Speaking of firewall... I agree with the other posts that they are probably referring to a network firewall, but of course, one would assume they would create a firewall between their two networks if they planned to link them via a secondary intranet anyway. But, I couldn't resist adding a bit of humor to the story, especially since the context of Mr. Rubin's comments didn't exactly facilitate the idea of a network firewall. ;)
 

azdrifter

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What is funny to me is that Google already shows favoritism toward one of the OEMs ( Samsung ) and the Galaxy Nexus. Isn't that why they build that phone to showcase the best of the best in their Android phones and that's the reason that Moto owners are always complaining that their products get the very least attention from Google? Who knows maybe I'm wrong in my assumption that they would purchase a phone manufacture to build their own Phones and have complete anonymity. And if I'm wrong then so be it, but it wouldn't make sense to buy Motorola just to completely wash their hands of the company and say they are an entity of their own.
 

kodiak799

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The most interesting thing is that Google claims not to interfere or direct Moto with how they make their phones. Namely, they aren't going to dictate what Moto does with Blur. Maybe we'll see Moto offer a vanilla phone or two, or an unlockable bootloader or two, but implicit in that statement is that Google values that differentiation among manufacturers. And that actually makes sense, because the phones themselves aren't all that different from a hardware perspective, at least not to non-techies.
 

tjk629

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I don't know about y'all, but Andy Rubin's face has always scared me.
 
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