Discussion on:

Four ways the Google-Motorola deal will change the tech industry

"AT&T???s $39 million buyout of T-Mobile USA"
This should read $39 Billion!

Interesting article. Regarding point #4 & Google maintaining it's culture - well, as most past mergers seem to go, 'you are what you eat.'

If Google "grows up", innovation goes out the window. ...And the most valuable employees will probably leave.

Amazing, Google grow up, meet Mr Hiner's expectations of how a "grown up" company should act.

We will have punch cards,time logs will be kept of when you logged in and out of your work station, you will have personal KPI's, that will reflect on Team KPI's, that in turn will impact Group KPI's. Of course Group KPI's will have a direct bearing on Area and Regional Performance expectations and Share Holder Satisfaction and Expectations. We will of course need to "Manage" these corporate outcomes now that we are grown up, so we will be investing team leaders, also Team Leader Managers, who will report to Group Managers, who in turn will report to Area Managers, who will report to Regional Managers who report to Natioal Managers.
This of course will enhance our ability to enforce corporate standards and individual accountability, while enhancing and maintaining our "start-up culture" - Just like the big boys!

Anyone like to come and be inovative, leadfing edge, thinking outside the box in Googles all new grown up environment??
Hands up??

Jason Hiner, you do understand that the reason Google is doing so well is because it has such a great work environment right? So if Google "grows up" then all the great employees will go somewhere else.

Just because you've never had a great work environment doesn't mean other people shouldn't. Go vent out your anger somewhere else.

Maybe a bad example for this, but when Oracle purchased Primavera it discontinued support of Primavera P3, the DOS-like version of the product used by close to half of the large construction firms. Why? Not part of their core or future vision. Thus the analogy is Google "discontinues" the antiquated Motorola manu piece entirely, keeping just the patent parts they covet and unloading all of the manufacturing and management to highest bidder (e.g. HTC or similar). And my support for this argument is that Microsoft tried to get into manufacturing serveral times, and other than the XBox, I dont see a lot of success. And you can argue the XBox, while profitable, is a distraction. My two cents (this is fun; we are seeing a future Harvard business case in real time).

Me, I want to see the end of the patent wars. Hopefully both the external and internal ones to allow Android to flourish. That's the way to get real innovation, irrespective of the underlying culture. Apple used to be the counter culture who would eat MS's lunch, but now they play the same games.

Those patents have great value and Apple has always protected it's intellectually property. The one exception is the original Mac OS which they gave to M$ to develop business tools for. Hmmm...if you create something or innovate something it must be protected from theft. Copying, borrowing etc., without permission is theft. Apple's R&D as with MOTO is the Tech industry's most respected. The problem with Moto is that they have poor management and didn't keep up.

I read somewhere that Apple were already sueing Motorola. If so, why would Apple be worried about sueing Googlerola?

Great stuff - but you aren't right regarding point 4.

Google's culture is key to it's strategy - ie: continuous rapid innovation and imagination, taking risks and accepting failures as learning opportuniities.

The biggest cause of mergers ending in demergers is where cultural change isn't managed with extreme care. Companies that look right for each other on paper turn out culturally to be unhappy bed fellows.

I would think that Google will work very hard on a strategy to firewall the two businesses initially, with grass roots interaction being kept at arms length and closer integration only occuring at senior levels. Cultural change would then be drip fed and targeted at specific devisions and locations.

Strong businesses are capable of having differing cultures where those business units require them to be effective.

I agree here. The well-known 'indigestion' problems following mergers or acquisitions have to do with attempting to merge corporate cultures. But Google has stated that they don't with to make such a merger with Motorola Mobility, and I see no reason to doubt that.

...just keep "6 Sigma" segregated specifically to Moto's manufacturing process'...or why not create a new "G-Moto" quality standard??? Don't lose the creativity and innovation....

Google seems to be very efficient in it's deliveries. This could only improve the Motorola experience. Case in point, the broken corporate email application. It took many months and updates for Motorola to correct a non-syncing client and make the agent automatically pull mail from Exchange as promised. The agent showed up in mobile Exchange settings as some unknown Apache entity, and email had to be manually synced....?? Motorola user sites had hundreds of posts kvetching, begging, scolding the company for breaking the most attractive feature in the later generation of Android O/S it created. A lot of the posters were IT pros for corporations, all looking for info & trying to buy a vowel. Droid 2 & Droid X, unfortunaltely, were considered by many companies, according to the posting, and rejected because this very important feature was not functional. Motorola was basically uncommunicative on the issue, with only a few of it's forum moderators giving out any info on this, and even they sounded puzzled. I'm still holding on to my 1st generation Droid, since everything works without a hitch. I can only believe Google's implementations will be better designed, tested, and delivered.

While Google pumps out many products, the approach they take is to get it out there, whether "lab" status, or otherwise. They do have many bugs but when you release software, it only takes a download to get the next version. When in the hardware business you can't make production runs of buggy boards, not if you want to stay in business. I hope Google's zeal for innovation carries into the Motorola management but I don't think the cowboy style will apply well to the hardware business.

Your point about hardware is well taken. Google knows it's core strengths and Motorola's core strengths. Google won't repeat the mistakes of MS and others. They will find new ways to make mistakes b/c innovations come from permission to explore. Google's culture will invigorate Motorola.

Why should google "grow up" and become yet another boring, political work environment of Corporate America? I wish all companies had as much fun at the office as they seem to enjoy.

Agreed w/@DannyGraham: Google must manage its Moto integration with great care. Whether Google continues to prove that humanism is good business depends partly on how well its existing managers learn the corporate language from their newly visceral perspective. While applying their core principles to the absorption process may require new fervency and focus as they design a handshake with old cubicularity, the new deal is also a great opportunity for thoughtful Apple polishers to compare Google's pending integration of Apple's castoff with the halting success of Apple's Intel-ification.

Google's new model of convivial adulthood has a new arena in which to strut its stuff. As its management knows, it does this in an environment which - partly due to its prior innovations and absorptions - we don't have to wait, and we'll all surely see.

with 29,000 vs 19.000 employees at Motorola, that's a bit like David swallowing Goliath. Google sounds very mature already in stating that they will keep the companies separate. They complement each other, but hardware and software a two very different industries with very different focuses. It's much easier to "ship" digital ones and zeroes than it is a new peice of hardware. Now if only Google had purchasee wireless spectrum and offered unlimited data plans ... That is the true threat to innovation threatening future innovation.

I used to work at the Moto and it's "grown up" culture is one of the major reasons why Google is buying Moto and not the other way around. If Moto was not so grown up it would have enough innovation to have a mobile market all to itself as being the first mobile company in the world... Instead they were filling out management reports and performance reviews.

While Mr. Hiner sees Google as a company which has not grown up,
it seems many others see Google a company which has evolved.
Just sayin'...

I think as long as Goog can keep the bean-counters out of top management they will continue to develop. I for one hope they do succeed although I don't agree with every move they make.