President Obama should take a moment this morning to applaud Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
This deal is a case of an innovative and job-creating American company using its cash stockpile to invest in another American company–billions that will almost certainly be followed by more billions to develop new and innovative products. Rather than sitting on its profits, Google is doubling down on the mobile sector, and the result is almost certainly going to be more investment and more jobs in the U.S.
In a critical sense, Google is justifying its reputation as a force for disruptive innovation by putting its money behind its words. The company could have stayed in search advertising, and continued to collect its billions in income more safely. Instead, it’s turned itself into a full-fledged competitor to Apple in the mobile ecosystems space.
For the U.S. economy, the Google deal is nothing but good news. We’d be a lot better off if other companies with cash followed the Google example of investing in innovative U.S. companies–and President Obama should say so.
I can think of one more reason, one that is in the realm of the psychological element of economics, that might make this combination a good thing — they are both American icons. Motorola invented the cell phone. A young Google took the search engine to new heights. I cringe to think of the collective shudder that some of the technical community would have felt had the Motorola takeover been engineered by a non-American company.
I would also hope to see Google distracted from piling ever more advertising on the search experience.
I agree with all of your points.