A few moths ago Google announced plans to purchase Motorola Mobility. The approval of this purchase seemed very likely since it wouldn’t really form any monopoly and for the most part most of Motorola’s competition and even Motorola’s own shareholders seemed fine with the merger. Today both the United States and the European Union announced their approval of Google’s buyout of Motorola.
The European Union first said that they feel that the Google and Motorola merger won’t really cause any issues when it comes to competition but they will still keep an eye on the new merger mainly for things dealing with patents. Motorola isn’t the biggest smartphone manufacturer so really Google might just use Motorola for testing purposes and to get access to more patents to help protect Android from Apple. Over the past couple of years Apple has spent a lot of time fighting with companies like Samsung and banning Samsung Android devices in many countries.
The United States Department of Justice announced a very similar statement to the one made by the European Union. Basically as long as Google doesn’t use Motorola improperly the merger won’t be an issue. The DOJ won’t hesitate to “take appropriate enforcement action” in the case of something bad happening with the merger.
At this point in time the Google and Motorola merger won’t be able to happen until a few more countries approve it. We’re waiting on China, Israel, and Taiwan for the deal to finish. Chances are they’ll all be fine with the merger since the EU and US have already approved the merger.
What are your thoughts on this?
