A few months ago Google finally closed the deal on its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, replacing the old CEO with its own handpicked successor. Now the company is expediting its plans to consolidate Motorola. In the latest report, the search giant is getting ready to do some major restructuring, which will result in a 20 percent cut (about 4,000 people) of the handset maker’s workforce. This isn’t so much of a surprise as many executives had already hit the exit once the deal was done.

The way this job reduction will playout is Motorola’s operations in Asia and India, as well as its R&D spending in Chicago, Sunnyvale, and Beijing — is getting a drastic cut. Google’s goal is to trim down the fat on such a bloated company; a company that could only turn a profit six months out of the last four years. What makes sense is for Google to stop putting wasted resources into producing lower-end handsets, which is a plan the company intends to carry out. New Motorola boss, Dennis Woodside, told the The New York Times that he’s refocusing the company to concentrate on “a few cellphones instead of dozens.” Again, this isn’t new, we already had an idea that Motorola would refocus and begin to release lesser phones, which is something the old CEO Sanjay Jha uttered earlier this year.

In becoming a much leaner company, Motorola will begin to put more emphasis on things like voice recognition that can determine who is in a room, better cameras, and longer-lasting batteries. All great qualities phone owners love. The NYT report also mentioned how an executive close to situation believed it would be “more difficult” for Google and Motorola to spontaneously collaborate on Android projects.

This irks me, because it makes no sense. Why is it a problem for Google to do its own thing, with its own OS, on its own hardware company? My point is, every single OEM the search giant “partners-up with” has been doing whatever it wants with Android since day one (like throwing crappy skins on top of it). So why would things all of a sudden become “more difficult” with Google’s acquisition of Motorola? OEMs will continue to do whatever they want regardless.

[NYT; via The Verge]

Google to give 20 percent of Motorola's employees pink slips

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