Google to Pay HTC $1.1 Billion Under Joint ‘Cooperative Agreement’

Google will pay HTC $1.1 billion for an unspecified number of its employees and for a non-exclusive license to use HTC patents under a “cooperation agreement” the companies announced jointly Thursday. Many of the HTC employees were already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones, they said. Google will continue to have access to HTC's intellectual property to support future Pixel smartphone development, they said. The agreement expected to close in early 2018 “represents a significant investment by Google in Taiwan as a key innovation and technology hub,” they said. It gives Google a "platform to showcase how technology on the Android platform should be implemented," wrote David McQueen, research director at ABI Research. It also becomes a "reference for Google’s OEM partners on how to implement technology innovation coming from Google Labs and to fully utilize the most recent releases of the Android OS," he said. He cautioned that Google "has been down this path before" with Nexus-branded products. "Although no one could argue about the superior capabilities of the Nexus devices, they have not been the most attractive in terms of industrial design," he said.