Google bought Motorola for the patents. plain and simple. it has nothing to do with being "cool" Owning the patents provides protection for their "customers" (read: hw vendors) which means hw vendors get to keep shipping android products wihtout fear of being sued. shipping android products helps the mother ship make it's fortunes through google ads and the like. the trends that show web content being increasingly accessed by mobile devices is the reason why the likes of google are branching out (and HP for that matter, are moving away from the desktop environment)