With Google having surprised the mobile and technology industries on Monday by announcing its decision to acquire Motorola Mobility for a whopping $12.5 billion, it has become quite clear that ‘portability’ is where the digital future is heading!

While Google’s monstrous purchase of Motorola Mobility is essentially being seen as a play to acquire Motorola's formidable patent catalog, industry watchers are of the opinion that the takeover may not be enough to ensure the protection of Google’s Android operating system against ongoing patent litigation. As such, the acquisition raises a few questions about what Google’s underlying strategy might actually be.

Apparently, Google is no longer content to merely dominate Internet search, or provide the increasingly popular Android OS; and is looking to dive headlong into the hardware business, with its Motorola Mobility takeover.

In fact, it is also quite possible that – similar to a precedent set by Apple and Amazon - Google has probably decided that search can be monetized not just by controlling the platform but also by controlling the software that runs on it.

Noting that Google thus far lacks a big presence in hardware, but the Motorola deal with change the situation, Roger Entner - founder of Recon Analytics – said that the Motorola Mobility acquisition is “a validation of Apple’s approach of tightly integrating software and hardware. While Google says, ‘Oh we’ll operate this as a stand-alone operation,’ it didn’t buy Motorola to leave it completely alone.”