Monday, August 13, 2012

Google shows MOTO employees the door

You never like to see anyone lose his/her job. When 4,000 folks at a once-storied American company are given pink slips, it's that much more difficult to swallow.

Hard as it is, though, that's reality in tech today. And Google's announcement of layoffs at its Motorola Mobility subsidiary - it bought the unit for an eye-popping $12.5 billion last August - is hardly a surprise. The MOTO unit has been under siege for years, with accumulating losses and barely-there market share that literally compelled Google to do something. Face it, when you make a $12.5 billion bet, there's got to be a payoff somewhere.

I wrote this article for Yahoo! Canada Finance: Google’s Motorola layoffs signal the future of hardware

I'll be on-air live with CTV News Channel (web, Twitter) just after 3:30 p.m. Eastern today, and will post a link to the video afterward.

Update: I spoke with Todd Van Der Heyden about this, but I can't seem to find the video online. Instead, here's a link to an interview I did last week with CTV News Channel's Jacqueline Milczarek and Dan Matheson about Apple's and Google's increasingly nasty relationship (video here).

Your turn: Would you buy a Google-branded smartphone or tablet?

3 comments:

Shane Black said...

I'm actually considering getting a Nexus 7 tablet when I have some spare cash and I'd like my next phone to be whichever Nexus version is around at the time. I have never been a big personal fan of Apple OS design, although I have no problems admitting that's just preference. They're slick (if overpriced) devices.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I'm considering buying once of those walkie talkie phones some day, Carmi.

Maybe I should just start with a plain old sell phone?
~

patti said...

I don't have a tablet. I really like my iPhone.

At this point - I don't think I'd buy a Google phone or tablet. Their search engine and Gmail - phenomenal, of course. But their attempts at social networking have been really disastrous IMO.

I use a Mac laptop, so I've kind of converted to all things Apple. I didn't mean to. It just happened. And then when I went into the Apple store for help, the customer service was beyond anything I had ever experienced in customer service. And that gets BIG POINTS from me.