Yes, Google owned Motorola at the time they and Motorola came out with the first Moto X (2012) which had Moto Voice. Motorola made a big deal how this was the first phone completely designed under the new ownership. When Google sold Motorola to Lenovo, they kept the Motorola Research division and Motorola patents. It was Google engineers and Motorola engineers who came up with Moto Voice, and Google kept the patents for that. Lenovo is allowed to use it and call it "Moto Voice", as they bought "Motorola" -- but it's really Google-owned technology patent, if you investigate closer.
http://news.lenovo.com/news-releases/lenovo-to-acquire-motorola-mobility-from-google.htm
One reason why we don't want ALL the Motorola apps baked into the ROM is because for the most part there's nothing unique about any of the Motorola apps. Every manufacturer feels compelled to include their apps which are redundant to Google apps or 1,000 other similar/identical apps available in the Google Play store. If someone has made a great app, 100 other people have also made an app very similar or identical. In a very simplistic example, LG or Samsung will have a "calculator" app, which is the same functionality as the Google Calculator. I don't need two or three calculator apps when I install a custom ROM. (If you really, really WANT the "Samsung" calculator, here it is. No guarantees it will work on anything other than Samsung phones...)
Same reason I don't need Motorola Email app. I don't. I use Android email for one account, I use Gmail for my Gmail account, I use Nine for my corporate account, and I use Yahoo email for my Yahoo account. I know ANY of those will be available for ANY Android device I might own in the future. Before I bought the Quark in 2014 ( and I own three of them, so I love them) I was LG and Google Nexus fan. My next phone may not be a Motorola. I'm not impressed with the 2015 and 2015 Lenovo Motorola phones. So, I don't necessarily want proprietary Motorola apps that may only work on Motorola devices.
Moto Migrate? That functionality is built into Android (or at least CM-based ROMs). Every time I sign into a new ROM, I'm asked to place my old phone next to my new phone so the NFC chip can read my settings.
Motorola Car Finder? Waze tells me where I parked also, and that function is integrated into that Navigation app. (Google owned Navigation app, by the way.
) Available for any Android device. I don't need a separate Motorola app to tell me what Waze Navigation app already tells me.As for Moto Voice, there are many other apps which will read your texts to you while driving. In another thread, on this same topic -- since people keep bringing it up -- I listed like half a dozen such apps, but I'm not going to go find them now. Besides OK Google you can also configure the new Google Assistant, which is an advanced form of OK Google. It's a personal assistant which can do almost anything. Plenty of choices!
For Moto Display, yes that is one "app" (function) that is proprietary and is not open sourced. But our CM dev took great pains to replicate that feature, including use of the Quark IR sensors, under the guise of "Ambient Display". Quark (XT1254/XT1250/XT1225) Ambient Display is DIFFERENT from regular Android Ambient Display. It's basically Moto Display. I gave a link on how to configure it.
Point is, for me most Moto apps are bloatware I don't want. IF people want to download and install them, permissions in this ROM and some other ROMs allow you to do so. You can pick and choose what you want, but there's plenty of alternatives which might work even better! We don't want nor need Moto apps "baked into the ROM".
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EDIT: Doing some more research, Motorola feels the same way I do and has killed off some of their apps due to redundancy in Android.
http://phandroid.com/2015/10/02/motorola-removing-many-apps-services-in-android-60-marshmallow/
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