The news that Google is buying Motorola woke me up prior to my morning coffee. In retrospect it makes sense, but it was big news, and most unexpected.

Assuming that regulators let it go through, some interesting things are likely to play out:

• I’m calling stalemate or ceasefire in the patent war. Motorola has a very large holding of patents – probably sufficient to make Apple and Microsoft rethink their strategy regarding Android.
• I’m guessing that they won’t try too hard to fully merge the two companies. The cultures are quite different, and probably incompatible (although they’re both very engineer-driven, so maybe I’m wrong here).
• This is not good news for RIM. I was discussing this this morning with somebody who has a lot of connections there, and he thinks that unless they get their new OS out soon (and it is very good), they’re dead in the water.
• I’m also guessing that some other big software players are going to get serious hardware envy. This could trigger a real wave of M&A in the near future (which would be good news for the markets, for a change).

Interesting times…