According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, Motorola is about to announce the sale of their Good Technology,Inc messaging division to Visto Corp. When Good first came out they were widely viewed as a competitor to RIM’s BlackBerry service. Their push technology (email, calendar, contacts) ran on a variety of hardware including the Palm Treo and seemed for a week that it might actually be a competitor to Microsoft and RIM. Then Motorola came along in 2007 with a $438 million bag of money and put a stop to that.

Visto had started litigation against Good in 2006 claiming patent infringement. Motorola currently sells Good’s mobile email through wireless carriers in the US such as AT&T, Sprint, Nextel and Verizon Wireless. Curiously the article in the Wall Street Journal indicates that:

Despite the expected sale, engineers and other staff who worked on Good’s email service are now central to Motorola’s efforts to develop a new class of cellphones. These phones, focusing on social-networking and expected later this year, are at the core of Motorola’s efforts to turn itself around, according to people familiar with the matter.

Farewell Good – both of your subscribers are going to miss you.

WSJ