Motorola Mobility shareholders voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve Google’s purchase of the company. About 99 percent of the shareholders vote in favor of the deal at the special meeting.
“We are pleased and gratified by the strong support we have received from our stockholders, with more than 99 percent of the voting shares voting in support of the transaction,” Motorola Mobility chairman and CEO Sanjay Jha said after the meeting.
Google gets another step closer to buying Motorola Mobility
Google announce in August that it planned to purchase Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion. The deal will give Google a long list of patents it can use to help defend its Android OS platform in court, and the Internet search giant seems more interested in those patents than Motorola’s hardware offerings.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the time, “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”
The Motorola deal will give Google some 17,000 patents, 18 of which patent experts expect will be useful in defending Android OS, and partner smartphones based on the operating system, from Apple and its team of patent lawyers.
Google executives said Motorola will continue to run as an independent company. That decision, however, could give Motorola an advantage in the smartphone market that other Android device makers don’t share since it will have easier access to Google and the Android development team.
Google and Motorola’s deal still faces standard regulatory approval and is expected to be completed in early 2012.