Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion

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After giving us a quick statistics lesson regarding Android’s numbers (more than 150 million Android devices activated worldwide with over 550,000 devices activated every day) over on the Official Google Blog, Google CEO Larry Page announced that Google has agreed to acquire Motorola for a cool $12.5 billion.

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Motorola’s “total commitment to Android in mobile devices” is one of the first reasons offered as to why Google decided pursue the acquisition, and they aim to create “amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.”

Google assures everyone that the acquisition will not change their handling of Android or Motorola. From the official blog post:

This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.

Of course, the blog post had to mention the recent Microsoft and Apple team-up against Google:

We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

The post goes on to claim that the combination of Google and Motorola will “supercharge” Android, as well as “enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences.”

It’s kind of strange when you wake up in the morning and see that Google just bought Motorola.

(via The Official Google Blog)


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