I don't get it: what could they do with them? 280North's main product is Atlas, a development platform that creates applications that run on Motorola's Droids, but on an OS that's not developed at Motorola... someone please convince me this isn't a desperate attempt for Motorola to appear somehow competitive.
But, yeah, I don't know why Motorola? It does seem desperate, but it's a good buy nonetheless cuz Capuccino is pure js (it's a superset of js after all) goodness.
Read point six in Steve's "Thoughts on Flash". Apple isn't interested in actively developing web platforms because, as Jobs said,
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. [...] This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool.
Apple was probably on to something, but realized that there was no money to be made. Motorola, on the other hand, wasn't making money on software anyway. So this approach could be good for them.