Google buys chip start-up from ex-Apple designers

I agree with the comments on the link, clearly these were ex semi PA employees who didnt want to work for apple, not apple employees that started a chip company.<p>What they wilk do for google, provided the employees don't peel from google as well is speculative at best.<p>But I'd doubt google bought it for the same reason as apple bought semi-pa. Google seems pretty adament on working qith existing handset providers.

Even if they do want to get into chip design (low power chips -- the area where PA semi excelled) they may expose themselves to patent suits if they directly compete with Apple in the handheld market.<p>Not saying they cannot avoid it, but in that case they loose some of the expertise of these guys.

The article mentions there not being any idea of what Google intends to do with the purchase, but at this point it seems relatively clear that although there are a number of applications, a focus on Android (phone and/or table) seems to be the big key here.<p>Interesting move.

Educated guess (back in February) that it could be about servers/network:<p><a href="http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semiconductor-blog/2010/02/could-agnilux-be-making-arm-ba.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semicon...</a><p>(If so, not unrelated: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276510" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276510</a> - seems there's interest in eating Cisco's lunch.)