Google Inc. and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. yesterday announced that they have signed an agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for about $12.5 billion. The deal was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. 
Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Motorola Mobility is a dedicated Android partner. It means that the transaction enables Google “to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing,” says the official press release. Motorola Mobility stays a licensee of Android, which remains an open platform. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

Paying a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility, Google makes the biggest deal in its history and ensures itself more space on the market, where the company competes with rivals like Apple and Microsoft.

“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,” said Larry Page in the official Google blog.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012, when regulatory approvals in the US, the European Union and other jurisdictions, and the approval of Motorola Mobility’s stockholders will be receipted.

Google keeps on offering new products to its users. Some of the recent ones are сheap Gmail-to-phone calls and an integrated e-reader iRiver Story HD.