Motorola Mobility and Google first announced plans to merge the two companies back in August for a cool $12.5 billion. That"s a lot of money no matter how you look at it. Today Motorola Mobility revealed that during a special shareholders meeting, owners of the company"s stock voted overwhelmingly to approve the merger deal with Google.
That means that the two companies are now one step closer to making their merger dream come true. Google currently expects that the deal will close sometime in early 2012. Motorola already makes a number of smartphones, along with the Xoom tablets, with Google"s Android operating system but Google has already claimed that it will treat Motorola Mobility as a third party smartphone maker rather than a regular subsidiary.
The big question is whether or not we will see other companies try to complain about this move to Google. It"s possible that other Android smartphone makers like HTC, Samsung, and others might not be keen on the idea that Motorola will soon be a part of the company that actually developed the Android OS.
While Google may say publicly that Motorola will be treated as a separate company after the merger is complete, that may not be enough for other smartphone makers who may believe that Motorola will have some kind of upper hand when it comes to future Android devices.