In a discreet blog, Google announced “We’ve Acquired Motorola Mobility”.

In a battle that has been waging on and off for the last 12 months, Google have now cleared the final obstacle, which was the Chinese Regulators, and have cleared and completed the USD$12.5Bn dollard acquisition.

This is a large turn for Google who has always been a software maker, and now cements them as one of the largest Android handset manufacturers in the World, certainly the #1 choice in the USA.

Google CEO Larry Page was quoted, “The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. It’s now possible to do things we used to think were magic, or only possible on Star Trek—like get directions right from where we are standing; watch a video on YouTube; or take a picture and share the moment instantly with friends.

It’s why I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola’s StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.”

The more interesting and no doubt valuable asset, is Motorola’s 17,000+ mobile hardware and software patents (and another 7,000+ pending), that are now owned by Google and Android.

This is certainly a move to block out Apple and any other competitors’ access to the highly prized patented systems.

But what will the future hold. This is a bold move for Google, who have relied on both Motorola and more recently Samsung to produce their vanilla, flagship Nexus range of phones.

Will Google also succeed in hardware innovation as much as they have in software innovation? We’d like to bet yes, but only time will tell.

Source: Google