Google Inc. has made another huge step outward from its primary role as an Internet search engine.
The company has a deal to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion dollars, cash. The deal comes as a step for Google to keep pace with Apple and Microsoft in the industry of mobile computing.
Google’s offer to purchase Motorolla on Monday is the largest deal that Google has ever proposed, and this deal certainly comes with some risk involved. By purchasing Motorolla, Google may have possibly alienated other companies, such as HTC, Samsung, and LG, that run on Google’s Android Operating System.
The deal has not yet been approved by federal regulators. The company has received scrutiny from the government that they have been abusing power to stifle competition.
Motorola employs 19,000 people, not many fewer than Google’s 28,800 employees, but employment is not the major aspect of this deal, patents are.
Motorola is the cell phone pioneer. They introduced the first cell phone nearly 30 years ago, and have grown to have more than 17,000 patents, and an additional 7,500 patents still waiting to be approved. Obtaining these patents would help protect Google from other industry leaders.