How much did Google actually lose from Motorola

As a refresher – Lenovo bought Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion yesterday, which would make it around two and a half years since Google bought Moto for $12.5 billion in 2011.

So by using simple math, you get that Google has lost some $9.6 billion in that span right, only getting a rich patent portfolio to show for it? Adding the money Motorola drained from Google on a quarterly basis the figure is even over $10 cool billion. Well, not exactly. Some analysts are estimating the figure to be only half as big. Here are the numbers.

When Google bought Motorola the latter was sitting on $3 billion in cash and close to $1 billion in tax credits so the deal cost Google around $8.5 billion. Then Google sold Moto’s set-top box business to Arris for around $2.4 billion, rounding the total to $6.1 billion. Finally by subtracting the $2.9 billion from Lenovo and you’re looking at a $3.2 billion loss by Google.
And that’s a figure that the Motorola patents alone might justify, so Google didn’t do quite as bad. It also got to keep the modular Project Ara. To put it in perspective, it turns our Google paid just about the same for Motorola as it did for Next Labs, which is mostly known for making thermostats, .