Might Google Have a Sly Motive Behind Motorola?

[Commentary] What is Google's long-term plan for Motorola? Did it buy the business just for patents, or does Google really want to be in the hardware business? How much money is Google willing to sink into it? Here's a theory: What if profits aren't part of the plan at Motorola? What if Google's plan for smartphones isn't to directly make money for itself but, instead, an attempt to destroy money for other companies by making the phone a commodity device?

In particular, think of Motorola as a long-term effort to drive down the insanely high profits raked in by just two companies -- Apple and, to a lesser extent, Samsung -- on a single product line, smartphones. Over the long run, Google can't abide these profits. As a corporate entity, Google is obsessively, almost religiously devoted to a single, towering mission. Everything it does, from core products such as Android and Chrome to far-out flights of fancy like robotic cars and computerized glasses, furthers a single goal: to get more people to use the Internet more often. In Google's view of the world, the iPhone is way overpriced. If the iPhone were cheaper, Apple would sell a lot more phones than it does now. So too would the rest of the industry, since other companies peg their smartphone prices to Apple's.

This would be a boon for Google: More iPhones means more surfing (especially search), which means more ad dollars for Google.