Google has been on the offensive lately, strategically placing itself in direct competition with major tech giants. Earlier this summer, the company declared social media war by unveiling Google +, an obvious effort to challenge Facebook’s dominance. Today, Google announced that it will acquire Motorola, the cell phone manufacturer that has been solely dedicated to the Android operating system since 2008.

Google agreed to buy Motorola for 12.5 billion dollars, a 63% premium on the price of Motorola shares at market close on Friday. Google, which already had android, has now acquired the hardware market and patent arsenal to enter into more direct competition with fellow triple threat, Apple. In a blog post today, Google CEO Larry Page assured that Android would remain and open platform and that Motorola would be run as a separate business. The acquisition, he said, is meant to “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.”

Conclusion

Increase competition indeed...Google plays up its openness policy as a selling point for a culture that has been increasingly wary of big business. At the same time, the company that started out as an Internet browsing is hungrily expanding its empire. Google conquered the search world without breaking a sweat and is now poised to take over the entire computing experience (see the new Chrome Operating System). There is no denying that Google’s browser, email, online apps, and services make our lives infinitely easier, and Android has been a huge success within the mobile market. The next logical step for Google was to acquire the hardware to complement its software dominion. While the company does maintain an openness policy for its mobile platform, it certainly can afford to do so. For Google, the Internet world was not enough. But it was such a perfect place to start.