What does Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility mean?

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Google CEO wrote for the Official Google Blog that the search engine giant will be gobbling up Motorola's mobile manufacturing division for $12.5 billion. He says that they are making that decision because in 2008, "Motorola bet big on Android as the sole operating system across all of its smartphone devices".

Read on to hear some predictions people are making about what implications this purchase will have.
Google will keep Android open and will run Motorola as a separate business. But what difference will this have on the industry?

First of all, Motorola Mobility has over 17,000 patents. Google will use these to their advantage. Adding so many patents to their arsenal will make them really strong in patent infringement lawsuits that constantly go on in the mobile industry. As Larry Page puts it clearly:

"We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android... Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies."

Many people are saying that the addition of a cell phone manufacturer to a company that already makes the world's leading mobile operating system will cause some favoritism. But Google seems to be implying that Android will remain as it is. The only thing we can expect now is that Motorola will be making Nexus-like phones. Many more Motorola phones will likely get 'pure Android' and updates directly from Google.

"Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere."

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What does Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility mean?