But none of those products were actually revolutionary and none of them did much at all to change the landscape of the mobile phone market. Each of those phones series sold only marginal numbers in the grand scheme of things, perhaps the RAZR having been the most impressive for its times. The StarTac in the early days was a fairly expensive and high-end proposition but it didn't filter down through the market in competitor's products. Neither did the RAZR. Motorola just kept spinning iterations until the products ran out of steam, not being able to improve on the first releases significantly at all. The "Droid" is a Verizon branding which applies to many phones, but Motorola's first was just another run of the mill iPhone copycat. A copycat of the phone that truly did change the mobile handset market forever. The most dramatic shift and progression in the history of the mobile phone in fact. In recent times (10+ years), I think only the iPhone can be called revolutionary. If you go 20 years then I'll give some props to Nokia as well for really bringing the small-ish candybar to the forefront of the industry.

The only revolutionary Motorola phone, IMO, was their 1980's brick which started this whole portable phone thing.

I can't see Google ever partnering with any other handset maker on a new Nexus-style product when they now have Motorola in-house. I can definitely see them trying this again for real this time with Motorola's carrier contacts and retail power. I'm not sure they'll be able to match other Android licensees products however unless they screw them somewhat on the software side.

I'll say it again, I don't think Apple is worried at all and I'm sure Microsoft is going to use this turn of events to try and sweet talk some additional Windows licensees to the table. The Moto patents so far sound like non-issues with respect to on-going legal struggles with the likes of Apple. Google will find out exactly what they've acquired soon enough.