Google Decides To Sell its Moto

It looks like Google has second guessed itself.  When it bought Motorola Mobility a couple years ago for $12.5 billion dollars, their thought must have been to create a competitive phone product to compete with Apple.  But also selling its Android operating software to other phone companies, the idea of its own phone brand created many conflicts of interest.  So Google has chosen to reverse its course, selling Motorola Mobility to Lenova for a measly $2.9 billion dollars.  A little over a year ago, Google sold the Motorola Mobility division that makes the cable boxes to Arris for about $2 billion dollars.  So adding that gain, it is almost an $8 billion dollar loss in only 2 years, although likely a drop in the bucket for Google. 

Obviously Google continues to put more effort into its other activities, including the growth plans for Google Glass.  But the decision to sell the phone hardware business clearly demonstrates a different direction for Google, not as a phone manufacturer, but as the brains behind every other phone maker.  A small misstep for Google that they recognized quickly and can now keep moving forward.