Google cherry-picks the best bits of HTC for $1.1 billion

HTC has accepted $1.1 billion to hand over much of its smartphone engineering talent and IP to Google.
Some kind of M&A involving the two has been on the grapevine for some time but the assumption was that Google would simply buy HTC with the kind of cash Larry Page routinely finds down the back of his primary-coloured beanbag-sofa. In the end Google was able to just pluck out only the parts of the company it wanted.
The main acquisition is a reported 2,000 smartphone engineers, many of whom