With all the drama surrounding the AT&T and T-Mobile deal, perhaps you forgot that another major tech merger is still in the works—Google and Motorola.
Though the search giant's purchase of Motorola has not encountered as much opposition as the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, the European Commission recently suspended its investigation of the Google deal in order to gather more details.
"The European Commission has asked for more information, which is routine, while they review our Motorola Mobility acquisition," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "We're confident the Commission will conclude that this acquisition is good for competition and we'll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review."
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the EU's Competition Office said "the deadline for a decision to be taken in this case has been suspended because the Commission needs from Google certain documents that are essential to its evaluation of the transaction."
"Once the Commission has all the necessary information, it will re-start the clock and publish a new Phase I deadline in the Web site," she continued.
In September, the U.S. Department of Justice also asked for more information about the pending merger of Google and Motorola.
"Today we received what is called a 'second request,' which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal," Dennis Woodside, a Google senior vice president, said at the time. "This is pretty routine; we've gotten these kind of requests before," he said, pointing to the DOJ's inquiry into Google's purchase of ITA.
The DOJ request—and now, the EU inquiry—means the deal will not close as quickly as Google initially thought, but as Woodside noted in September, "close scrutiny is part of the process."
In mid-August, Google surprised tech enthusiasts by announcing plans to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Motorola has been a purely Android shop for some time, but the deal was primarily viewed as a way for Google to gets its hand on some much-needed patents; Motorola has at least 17,000.
There were concerns, however, about how the deal might affect other Android partners. According to Google's Andy Rubin, the major Android players were "very enthusiastic" about the deal and the rather canned responses posted on Google's Web site from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and LG said all four companies "welcome" the news. Many in the analyst and tech community, however, greeted that sentiment with a nice, big, "Yeah right."
Trouble is, Motorola rivals like Samsung and HTC have benefited greatly from selling Android devices, and many simply can't afford to drop the platform, even if the Google-Moto deal doesn't sit well with them. For its part, Google insisted that Motorola will continue as a separate company and that Android will remain an open platform.
For more, see Google Acquires Motorola Mobility: What You Need to Know.
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:20am Eastern with comment from the EU.