What Google won't do with Motorola

This week Motorola has finally officially been purchased by Google after being approved in all markets around the world – now what happens? You should know that neither Google nor Motorola have officially stated what their plans will be, so the following is of course merely speculation – as is every other report you're reading this week on this situation. That said, it's fairly clear what the possibilities are for Motorola and Google in the near future.

When Google acquired Motorola for real this week, the latter company's CEO Sanjay Jha was replaced by Google's choice Dennis Woodside, and another "former Googler" Gary Briggs was chosen to be the new Motorola marketing lead. What you absolutely will not see is Google giving Motorola anything other than human bodies to run the posts they feel will be best filled by their own former Google professionals. Motorola will not get special favors from Google, nor will it become anything other than its own independent business.

If Google wanted to use Motorola as its own hardware company for Android, they would have to change the way they do business with Android entirely. If for example versions of Android software are delivered to Motorola before they're handed over to the rest of Google's hardware friends like HTC and Samsung, the latter groups will quit Android entirely. No company wants to compete with the company they're supposed to be working with for software updates when that company gives out the goodies to themselves first.

Google does work with one company each time they release a new giant software update, of course, this line of resulting smartphones and tablet (soon!) being called the "Nexus" lineup. The difference between these groups (including HTC and samsung in the past) and Google working with Motorola is that Google does not benefit in any way outside advertising revenue from the Android market's apps inside the smartphone. If Google were to give extra attention to the hardware company they own, the rest of the market would see it as them attempting to be come Apple, so to speak, and would leave immediately.

• Motorola will remain independent from Google even though they're run under the same larger umbrella.

• Google will not give Motorola software updates earlier than the rest of the manufacturers just because they own them.

This ownership may very well reel in the rumor that Google's next release will be on more than one carrier, with Motorola being amongst several that push a Nexus device out right at the start of Google's next update. Google's next software update will almost certainly be dubbed "Jellybean" and will be showing up at this year's Google I/O 2012 – seeya there!