Google has always been a "hardware maker"

I continue to be amused by the pundits who claim Google has gone astray in purchasing Motorola Mobility--on the basis that Google shouldn't get into "hardware"--ignoring the fact that Google has always been a hardware manufacturer--

Google: We're One of the World's Largest Hardware Makers | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: "Google is a web company, and it rakes in most of its money from online ad sales, but it has another identity that few people understand: It’s also a massive hardware maker. For years, the company has designed the servers, networking gear, and perhaps other hardware that helps drive its many web services. . . .  “There’s a bit of a mythology that Google doesn’t know anything about hardware,” he (CFO Pichette) said. “We’re big in hardware. Google actually builds servers in a factory that actually probably makes us one of the largest hardware manufacturers in the world. And so we know hardware. We know about flash. We know about equipment. We know about supply chain. So we were very well-equipped from the hardware side, to be very competitive in that space. . . . ”

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