Google Could Get a Chance to Buy T-Mobile After It Closes Motorola Deal

That information is indexed and can be served up at any time. Android, Chrome and things such as Google Apps provide a front end for that information by making it accessible, useful and in some cases entertaining. Motorola gives it the mechanism for delivery through its smartphones and tablets. But the missing link is the pathway to information—the communications medium. That's where T-Mobile comes in.

Google could also bring T-Mobile something it has lacked for years, which is a commitment to invest in growth. T-Mobile may be the smallest of the four major U.S. carriers, but it claims to have the largest national 4G network, and 4G is what Google needs to deliver information efficiently. Furthermore, Google needs that 4G capability, globally, which is why T-Mobile is even more important. T-Mobile devices will work anywhere in the world. This with the synergy created by owning Motorola could easily start Google on the road to true ubiquitous access to information.

I realize that this is starting to sound a little like Isaac Asimov's Galactic AC and its successors, but the benefits of a single means to access all available knowledge are fairly clear. While Google and cloud computing weren't exactly what Asimov imagined would happen the last time I talked with him about this (he assumed that individual computers would get larger and larger—the idea of the cloud was beyond the horizon in those days), the functionality is similar.

So would Google buying T-Mobile be the beginning of a global mechanism for delivering any information anywhere? Maybe, but maybe not. For one thing, it's not clear that anyone is willing to pay for unrestricted access to all information. But in reality, information equates to money, one way or another. If enough people are willing to pay for some level of access to some of the information that's out there, either through watching advertising or paying subscription fees, then having more of the solution in one place makes access to information more efficient.

Greater efficiency means more reason to ask for information, and that in turns means that there are more ways to make money and more ways to get paid. So if Google owned T-Mobile, then it could get paid for a piece of information, a datum if you will, when it shows the advertisement that accompanies it, paid again when people buy the Motorola device to gather the information and again for the T-Mobile network that transports the information. No matter how you look at it, getting paid three times for a single datum is better than only getting paid once.