Google sold Motorola Mobility just a year and a half after buying it. On the surface, that seems like an admission of defeat.
But selling Motorola is less a confession that it messed up, and more a tacit admission that there's no real need for Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) to be making its own
Software licenses and driving people to search are how Google makes money on mobile. Selling smartphones, by contrast, has been a perpetual money loser for Google.
When Google started designing "Nexus" brand smartphones in 2010, smartphones were still by and large mediocre. Google needed to create its own hardware to show manufacturers how a smartphone should look, feel, and perform. Though Nexus phones themselves never overwhelmed in the sales category, the overall mission succeeded: Every major manufacturer now makes at least one top-tier phone with excellent performance.
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