After finally getting approved by China, Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility should close within two business days, Motorola said in a filing.
This nearly $13 billion dollar deal will take about nine full months to close as regulators had to take a close look at if the maker of Android buying a handset company was copacetic. China only agreed to the deal if Google agreed to keep Android free and open for at least five years, so we can look forward to that.
It’s unclear what the immediate next steps will be but look for a lot of layoffs or “restructuring.” Google has roughly 33,000 employees currently and it will be adding about 19,000 with the Motorola deal. The search giant has said it will keep Motorola independent but I’d be sharpening up my resume if I worked there.
As for products, Google has maintained that Motorola won’t be getting special advantages over other Android makers but I hope it does. Some of Motorola’s hero devices aren’t even getting Ice Cream Sandwich for a while, so I hope a Google-backed Motorola will be quicker with the updates and more flexible moving forward.
Google is going to own Motorola soon, what do you think about that?
[Via TechCrunch]