Google ready to lose $275m in Motorola deal

Ouch. If you’re a Google investor, avert your eyes. Turns out that Motorola buyout is going to cost the company US$275-million.

In a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Google said that the majority of the money would be spent on ensuring that the Motorola employees whose jobs Google is culling will be well compensated.

According to the internet giant, which is set to kill about 4 000 jobs at Motorola, it will provide “generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help the employees find new jobs.”

Thing is, those are just the costs it knows about. There could well be others that come out of the woodwork later in the year, although Google says it cannot “currently predict the amount of these other charges”.

If nothing else, the fact that Google is willing to lose that much shows that Google views Motorola as more than just a patent piggy bank. The internet giant clearly wants a hardware partner under its thumb.

And that’s far from a bad thing. We know that Android is at its best when it isn’t being fiddled with by other companies, trying to cram as much of their identity into their skins and overlays as possible.

As I previously noted, Google’s going to be coming from a long way behind, but if it manages to Motorola cool again, it’s definitely onto a winner.