Google’s $9.6-Billion Mistake (Bloomberg)
After nearly two years, Google’s calling it quits on the company’s ill-fated attempt to right the Motorola ship. Larry Page’s search giant is selling its Motorola business to Chinese computer maker Lenovo. The price of the deal is said to be around $2.91 billion, which is about $9.6 billion less than what Google paid for Motorola’s handset business. While Page’s original goal was grand in scope — to eat away iPhone market share by pushing its Android mobile operating system on Motorola phones — the plan never came to fruition. Page attempted to get out in front of the acquisition blunder when he wrote in a blog post on Google, “This move will enable Google to devote our energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem…” The only thing that backing away from the Motorola deal really drove was a loss in share price value, as GOOG fell 1.43 percent yesterday after the news broke.
