EU and US Approve Google-Motorola Deal

angry tapir writes "European regulators have given Google the green light to take over Motorola Mobility. The U.S. $12.5 billion deal faced strong opposition from open source and consumer rights advocates, including Consumer Watchdog, but the European Commission announced on Monday that the acquisition could go ahead, without conditions." Later in the day the DOJ announced an end to its investigation, greenlighting the acquisition in the U.S. as well.

Re:Thank heavens

[stephanruby]

...some kickass tablets and phones running Jelly Bean or Krispy Kreme, or whatever those letters end up being.

Krispy Kreme is trademarked. Jelly bean seems not to be.

A little known fact, the reason Android is now using generic pastry names is because they were originally using well-known android names, but they were afraid they'd get sued by the IP owners of those Android characters.

Good Hardware/Software

[Darkness404]

I think it will be interesting to see what hardware/software combos come out of this. Hopefully Google can make well supported Android phones without all the crap that current ones have, and make them be upgrade friendly for official updates instead of having to guess which handsets will be popular enough to get an upgrade.

Re:Let the lawsuits begin!

[Cimexus]

4G (well, LTE which really is still a 3G technology that American marketing droids have decided to wrongly call 4G) isn't yet available in very many places at all, globally speaking. Even in the US it's only in the large cities, and remember that Apple sells far more iPhones outside the US than in it. Plus given that the iPhone 4S supports HSPA+, that allows speeds that are more than fast enough for a mobile device already, regardless of all this 3G/4G/infinityG OMG terminology. (Remembering also that LTE comes with a tradeoff: rather crap battery life compared to HSDPA/HSPA/HSPA+)

Once you see 4G rolling out to more than a handful of places I'm sure it will be in the iPhone. In fact it will probably be in the next iteration due for release in the next 6 months.

Re:Let the lawsuits begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aging Hardware - Again, I can't really think of the last fantastic Motorola that everyone wanted to rush out and buy.

Seriously? The Droid Razr is one of the hottest phones out right now.

This spells doom for IP terrorism

[Daniel Phillips]

This spells doom for the IP terrorist policies of Apple and Microsoft, and is a probable "limiting factor" for Microsoft's phone ambitions. And obviously, this is all fine for Linux.