Google's (GOOG) announcement Monday that it has agreed to buy Motorola's recently spun off mobile devices business -- listed on NASDAQ as Motorola Mobility (MMI) -- for $12.5 billion could mean one of two things.

Either Google really wants to get into the Android manufacturing business -- putting it into direct competition with Apple (AAPL), the only other vendor that makes both a mobile operating system and the devices that run on it.

Or Google really wants the 17,000 patents and 7,000 patents pending that Motorola has assembled over the years, including . . .

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/15/is-google-buying-motorola-for-its-17000-patents/?hpt=hp_t2