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Last Thursday afternoon, in response to a softball question from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the subject of the relationship of Google's proposed takeover of Motorola Mobility to the ongoing patent wars, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt cleverly avoided linking the two. In fact, he suggested that Google was more impressed by the company's phones and their engineers than with its patent portfolio. "We're actually very excited about the product line and so forth," Schmidt told Benioff. "To use the Motorola brand and product architecture, and the engineers and creative people - these guys invented the RAZR!"

For those who may have already forgotten, the RAZR was perhaps the last trendy, fashionable phone prior to the iPhone. Launched in 2004, it was the U.S.' top seller for nearly three years, but that fact didn't help Motorola very much financially. And as far as design was concerned, the product line was not without its defects. No, it's hard to believe that RAZR engineering was the key selling point for Schmidt and Google.