The European Commission on Monday approved the pending merger of Google and Motorola Mobility, finding that the deal would not significantly alter the market as it relates to mobile operating systems and patents.
"We have approved the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google because, upon careful examination, this transaction does not itself raise competition issues," Joaquín Almunia, Commission Vice President in charge of competition policy, said in a statement. "Of course, the Commission will continue to keep a close eye on the behaviour of all market players in the sector, particularly the increasingly strategic use of patents."
In examining the deal, the EU looked at whether Motorola might be able to prevent rivals from releasing Android-based devices.
"The Commission's investigation showed Android helps to drive the spread of Google's other services," the EU concluded. "Consequently, given that Google's core business model is to push its online and mobile services and software to the widest possible audience, it is unlikely that Google would restrict the use of Android solely to Motorola, a minor player ... as compared to operators such as Samsung and HTC."
Despite Motorola's patent holdings, meanwhile, the EU also did not believe that Google's access to this portfolio would "significantly change the existing market situation."
The commission looked at whether these patents would allow Google to obtain preferential treatment for its products, like search and advertising. "The Commission found that Google already had many ways in which to incentivise customers to take up its services and that the acquisition of Motorola would not materially change this," the decision said.
"This is an important milestone in the approval process and it moves us closer to closing the deal," Don Harrison, Google's vice president and deputy general counsel, said in a blog post. "We are now just waiting for decisions from a few other jurisdictions before we can close this transaction."
That includes the Justice Department in the U.S., which in September asked for more information about the pending merger.
The EU approval comes several weeks after Consumer Watchdog penned a letter to European regulators asking them to block the pending merger of Google and Motorola Mobility on anticompetitive grounds.
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.