Google outbid itself for Motorola

MOBILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Google increased its bid for Motorola and its intellectual property by a third during acquisition talks, an SEC filing has revealed.

A US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document released today shows that the talks, which were held last month, lead to a higher bid from Google that took Motorola's value, or rather the value of its patents, up by a third to reach the £7.9bn winning bid.

The higher bid perhaps shows just how keen Google was to get its hands on Motorola's patents, especially after it lost out to Microsoft's and Apple's Rockstar Consortium in the bidding for Nortel's patents portfolio.

Around that time Google was very vocal about the importance of patents and, specifically how important it was the it owned some. While likening the situation to an arms race in public it was apparently working to get its own patents armoury in private.

The SEC filing shows that Google offered $30 a share in early August. This was swiftly rejected by Motorola, which asked for $43.50. Google increased its offer, though not by that much, before both settled on $40, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ addds that Motorola chose to negotiate exclusively with Google because it feared that a public auction might have been an embarrassment. Presumably it had not been following patent related auctions at the time. µ