Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility this morning for $12.5 billion in cash. One of Google’s biggest motivations for the purchase is to bolster its patent profile, which has been under relentless attack by companies including Microsoft and Apple. With the purchase, Google will gain control of more than 17,000 mobile-related patents worldwide, with 7,000 more Motorola patent applications in the pipeline.

They’ve been complaining for a while about the attacks on Android due to their relatively weak patent warchest.  Hopefully this will answer a few questions that the other mobile companies have as to the validity of Android as a big time OS for mobile devices.

via Google, needing patents, buys Motorola wireless for $12.5 billion.

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