Patents, schmatents! Google + Motorola could change your home
Summary
Don’t believe me, ask Qualcomm’s (s qcom) Paul Jacobs or the folks at Sonos or anyone building Android or iPhone (s aapl) remotes for cable. So even as the world wonders if Google knows what it wants to do with Motorola’s home businesses, which include baby monitors, Bluetooth headsets and cable gear, it has the potential to make waves with consumers and especially with service providers. The company, which used to be ISPs’ favorite whipping boy (until they moved on to hating Netflix (s nflx)) will soon find itself owning through Motorola Mobility a large portion of the set-top box market as well as some of the gear inside the cable plants. According to Multichannel News this deal has created some strange new bedfellows in the service provider world: This sort of convergence may have been unintentional, but it’s also something that should be expected as broadband, not only brings people closer together, but also forces our networks and devices to merge. Will it help wireline carriers keeps consumers in a pay TV world, or help ISPs deliver differentiated home automation services so they can forestall the process of becoming dumb pipes?