Google Announces Purchase of Motorola Mobility

As I've mentioned before, Apple is pretty much an unstoppable force in the mobile phone market. But it looks like Google's ready to take a shot at them.

Yesterday, Google agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion dollars. The deal would mean that Google would not just have its own hardware developer, but would also have access to all 24,500 patents that Motorola owns. Google's operating system for mobile devices, Android, is arguably the iPhone's biggest competitor.

This is huge for both companies, but there are a few concerns. Motorola is not the only company that carries Android. Samsung and HTC also carry Android devices, but with Google and Motorola working so closely together now, it is entirely possible for Google to decide that their new "friend" Motorola will be the only one to carry Android devices. A move like that could effectively shut out other Android carriers and have a huge effect on the mobile phone market.

Either way, it's going to be interesting to see what will happen with both of these companies in the coming months, and if Apple will fire back in any way.