Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) must have a lot of faith in Motorola. Last May, the search engine giant closed a deal with Motorola that cost them $12.4 billion. That was $5.5 billion in intellectual property, $2.9 billion in purchase price, $670 billion for net assets, $2.6 billion for goodwill, and $730 million for customer relationships.
These numbers come from Google’s recent SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing.
Last year, Larry Page (chief executive officer for Google) shared a blog post regarding his company’s future acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc (NYSE:MMI). He mentioned the kinship between the companies, and some of the achievements Motorola made. He also reminded us that this buy-up won’t affect Android as an open platform, and that they plan on operating Motorola as a separate business.
Page also stated that he hoped the future aquisition would help protect Android from top competitors Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
At the earnings call last month, Google added Motorola’s financial report. At press time, we don’t know exactly what Google has in mind for this company. Perhaps, they will utilize some of their patents in future Google products, or maybe they just wanted to beef up their financial portfolio. Either way, we hope that Google didn’t overspend on acquiring a company which could end up sinking their ship.
Google has always been an interesting company. They dominate the web with a roster of popular websites including Google Search, Gmail, Google+, Blogger, YouTube, and Google Analytics. But when it comes to mobile technology products, they almost always play second fiddle to Apple. Except for the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, which runs on their Android platform, they almost never enjoy the impressive number of sales that Apple does. This doesn’t mean that Google has any plans to give up though. The company’s first ever real Google tablet, Nexus 7, is selling at rates nobody expected. In fact, the 16 GB version of the Nexus 7 tablet has already sold out.
Perhaps this all works out as a balance for Google, where they dominate certain areas but not others. This doesn’t mean that things won’t change. All it takes is one amazing new product or software program to change the course. Maybe Google’s acquisition of Motorola will help pedal them further to that goal, then again maybe not. Whatever happens though, we know that Google is still sitting pretty in the mobile technology sector and it’s going to take a lot to knock them down even a notch, and I really doubt they have anything to worry about right now.
