Today it was announced that Google is selling handset maker Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. The move comes less than a week after the Chinese electronics company also agreed to acquire IBM’s low-end server business for $2.3 billion. Google purchased Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012.
Although the move is not necessarily a surprise, it is somewhat unexpected.
When Google purchased the consumer electronics end of Motorola, media pundits were quick to point out that the search company was primarily interested in attaining Motorola’s valuable patent portfolio. At the time, Google’s patent holdings were somewhere between slim to none and they desperately needed patents to defend themselves against legal actions, as Android had become a magnet for attracting patent trolls. Since then, Google has been actively adding patents to their portfolio.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
The article attempts to make the case for using CentOS over RHEL. Indeed, many of us who’re short on bucks and can’t afford Red Hat’s expensive support subscriptions are already using CentOS in server environments. We use it here at FOSS Force to serve web pages? Why? Because not only does CentOS have an extremely capable development team, the distro is in most ways a clone of Red Hat, which means the CentOS development team is able to leverage Red Hat’s research and development and incorporate it into their distro.
There’s plenty about Rockstar vs Everybody Android to remind me of the SCO fiasco. Enough so to make me wish we still had PJ and Groklaw to take care of the play-by-play. Last week, Google returned fire. Wouldn’t it be nice to have PJ’s take on this?
