Google has a pretty good track record with acquisitions (YouTube, Android, DoubleClick, Picasa... lots of smaller tuck-in acquisitions around their big products). The Motorola is an extremely poor example, because it was defensive against the Nortel patents/Rockstar consortium. Numerous analyses have shown it was very cost effective on a per-patent basis after taking into account Motorola's cash on hand, NOL credits, and the various parts of it they sold.
Edit: I couldn't find the terms of this deal, but the rumor was FB was offering $60M USD, so it's probably on that order of magnitude. I don't think it would be hard to make a business case for integrating this technology with Maps, making satellite view closer to real-time while reducing their bill for actual satellite imagery.
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Google has a pretty good track record with acquisitions (YouTube, Android, DoubleClick, Picasa... lots of smaller tuck-in acquisitions around their big products). The Motorola is an extremely poor example, because it was defensive against the Nortel patents/Rockstar consortium. Numerous analyses have shown it was very cost effective on a per-patent basis after taking into account Motorola's cash on hand, NOL credits, and the various parts of it they sold.
Edit: I couldn't find the terms of this deal, but the rumor was FB was offering $60M USD, so it's probably on that order of magnitude. I don't think it would be hard to make a business case for integrating this technology with Maps, making satellite view closer to real-time while reducing their bill for actual satellite imagery.