Looker that price tag: Google closes on $2.6bn acquisition of data analytics biz after all-clear from competition bods

Google Cloud has completed its $2.6bn acquisition of data analytics and machine learning outfit Looker after getting the thumbs-up from the UK's competition authorities. The purchase was first revealed last June, but was held up after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an investigation into the deal in …

[Tom 38]

Google bought Motorola for $12.5bn only to sell it off for a paltry £2.9bn

This is misleading. When Google bought Moto, the price was due to a bidding war for access to Moto's patents. When Google sold Moto on, they did so without these patents, in other words, without the thing that made it worth $12.5bn. Don Harrison, Google's VP of M&A said:

I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft and Apple teamed up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there’s a good argument that the Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio.