Google deal to take over HTC share is complete

The deal between Google and HTC, whereby the search giant takes over a part of the Taiwanese smartphone maker, has been completed. That reports Google. As a result, the American company will gain a few thousand employees from HTC’s R&D department.

These are often the people who worked with Google on the design of the Pixel 2 and the first generation of Pixel smartphones, Google reports. It is unknown whether the search giant gets its hands on certain parts of the R&D department or whether the company has manually selected HTC employees.

Google and HTC announced the deal in September. Google pays HTC 1.1 billion dollars, converted about 940 million euros, for the staff and a non-exclusive license deal on the patents of the Taiwanese smartphone maker.

The R&D department is located in the Taiwanese city of Taipei, which will now become Google’s largest department in Asia, the company reports. HTC continues to make smartphones. It recently released the U11+ and the Taiwanese smartphone maker will continue to release models. The Vive vr headset now falls under a separate branch of HTC and is not part of the Google acquisition.

With the acquisition, Google wants to bring in people for hardware design, while HTC can use the money well: the Taiwanese smartphone maker has not been running well for several years and often has to take losses.