Om Malik gets more details about the Motorola acquisition

> The high-level talks between Google and Motorola started about five weeks ago. Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha were talking directly, and only a handful of executives were brought into discussions. Our sources suggest that Android co-founder Andy Rubin was brought into the talks only very recently. Like I said earlier, this move was more about defense than any sort of long-term mastermind plan, as suggested by the delusional Dan Lyons.

The short span of time suggests that this was a REACTION to losing the Nortel bid, not part of the Nortel original plans. And the fact that they didn’t even bring in their key Android executive until late in the process suggests that it was, as I said before, a gut reaction, rather than a well-considered tactical move. They are panicking over there, and it’s starting to show. Honeycomb 3.0 was a disaster. Google is gaining no traction in the tablet space. Mobile phone market share growth—the only stat where Google was clearly winning—has slowed (even after rigging the numbers by counting cheap Chinese knockoffs as Android phones.) Microsoft is clearly still trying to muscle its way into the space, and could even still carve a niche for itself, especially if it keeps trying to buy more of Google’s partners. And even with strong market share, Google is still making little money with the Android initiative.

This Motorola purchase could very well backfire on Google, or it could turn out well, if they play their cards right. The problem is, Google has never been any good at the cards.

So it all depends on whether Google is ready to take Android into the territory of a “walled garden” as so many like to call the Apple approach. Drop the other partners, start making “Google” phones for real. Didn’t work for the Nexus series, but then again, the most dedicated Android fans all say that the Nexus phones were better than anything else out there. Maybe they can pull that off, but I doubt it. Not without a retail strategy in place.

That does seem to be the eventual plan, though. The question is, what happens in the short term to Google’s numbers if HTC, Samsung, etc. see the writing on the wall and jump ship before Google can get a decent line of Motorola Android phones going?

And what will all those Google fanboys say when Android suddenly becomes available on only one brand of phones?

The most important thing we can take away from all of this is that Google is not playing on its own turf. It no longer controls Android’s destiny, if it ever did. Apple is still the only company in tech playing offense.