Google announced on Wednesday night that it would acquire a team of engineers from Taiwanese smartphone company HTC for $ 1.1 billion. Many of the engineers were already working in partnership with Google on the company’s Pixel phone, and the move suggests Google is doubling down on its hardware business.
Over the years, Google has made a series of strategic acquisitions, and as you can see in this chart from Statista, many of the deals were much larger. The 2011 Motorola acquisition is the largest by far at $ 12.5 billion. Google ended up selling Motorola a few years later, concluding that the company’s patents were the only thing worth holding on to. Google and the HTC engineers (the “Nooglers”) are no doubt hoping this most recent deal will not end the same way.
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