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by MIKEMAC972 4311 days ago
Great article and very interesting comments. One big takeaway for me is the fact that Google retained ownership of all patents after they sold the business to Lenovo. It'll be interesting to watch Google utilize those across their entire business, not just on the mobile side.
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The patents were one of the main reasons the Motorola buy/sell was such a net win for Google (and that's without considering the benefit of strengthening the diversity of the Android ecosystem, tho we obviously don't yet know how successful that strategy was). When you factor in the value of the patents, the sale of Motorola Home, the tax benefits they got from Motorola's losses, and one last bullet point that I simply can't remember right now (ugh): what looked like a big loss for Google ended up making them something under a billion dollars (and again, this is before considering the value of the actual strategic intent of the deal).
That's strange, they made money on the deal, but got tax benefits from the losses?