Google has not bought HTC, or at least not the entire company. Recently we were dawning with the news that Google has acquired a part of HTC’s smartphone business for $ 1.1 billion, and some have confused this operation with an integral purchase of the Taiwanese company by the search engine.
This is what Google has bought from HTC
However the agreement between both companies is somewhat more complex than that, and is far from what we saw in the purchase of Motorola by Google in 2011.
What Google has done is not to buy HTC, and even its mobile division has been rumored for some time. What it has done has been to take a team of 2,000 engineers and employees of the division «Powered by HTC», many of whom have already worked on the mobile phones of the Pixel family. Google has also purchased a non-exclusive license of HTC’s intellectual property.
The idea of Google with this acquisition is clear. You no longer need to buy an entire company, but just reinforce your hardware division by staying with the innovative part of a reputed company.