CNet’s Jason Hiner in a 3,000-plus-word piece (that I linked to in April) about Webtop, Motorola’s technology for docking an Android device and making it a desktop computer:

…as Google nears finalizing its acquisition of Motorola, the tide may be turning on sales of Webtop devices, and that could set up a huge opportunity for Google and Android to use Webtop to launch a full frontal attack on Apple and Microsoft.

The Verge’s Amar Toor today:

Motorola on Friday confirmed that it has abandoned development of Webtop — software that enabled smartphones to power laptops via the Lapdock accessory. The company explained the decision in a statement provided to CNET, bluntly attributing the move to a lack of consumer adoption.

Oopsies!

Google/Motorola has also withdrawn its second ITC complaint against Apple. Although the reasons are unknown, I guess we can’t use that to beat them over the head on hypocrisy anymore, but if they didn’t acquire Motorola to battle Apple on the patent front and they didn’t acquire it for Android-related technologies and they certainly didn’t acquire it for the profit it’s making, why the heck did they acquire it?

Oh, well! It’s just $12.5 billion. Its not like it was a lot of money or something.

As a side note, I wonder if consumers not wanting one device that “does it all” (crappily) has any implications for the Microsoft Surface?

Probably not. Nah.

Added: A couple of people have complained about drawing parallels to Windows 8 which is obviously a full-fledged operating system. My point is that I have yet to see anyone prove that you can get one device to do it all by either scaling up from a mobile operating system or down from a desktop operating system.