Chinese govt. approves Google to acquire Motorolla

PanARMENIAN.Net - Chinese antitrust and competition authorities have approved Google to acquire Motorolla.

VentureBeat reports that according to The Wall Street Journal, Google’s deal to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion dollars will likely close next week. The deal is said to give Google 17,000 patents and 6,800 pending patent applications owned by Motorola.

China was the last regulatory hold-out to approve the merger, which was approved by the United States Department of Justice and European Union regulators in February. Now that China has given the go-ahead, the deal can be finalized.

Antitrust issues were a major reason that regulatory boards had to mull over before approving the deal. Mainly, there were concerns that Motorola would be given preferential treatment for the Android operating system, which runs on Motorola devices. New updates, better-optimized versions of Android may go directly to Motorola, while taking much longer to reach other smartphone manufactures. Google defended itself saying it has no intentions of giving Motorola special treatment over other Android-running OEMs such as HTC, Samsung, and LG. Apparently the argument was enough for Google it get over all of the regulatory hurdles it needed to close the deal.

Google is interested in purchasing Motorola mostly for its patents. Now that Google is duking it out in court with Oracle over Java-related patents, it’s more important than ever for Google so it can defend itself against future Android lawsuits, VB says.