Google will take a net loss of around 5 billion and gets patents in return. In hindsight, probably Google would have done lot better by acquiring IDCC while reaping all of the following benefits
- top notch scientists,
- patents,
- future revenue and past payments
- cash,
- less or no operational headache (that is what they got from Motorola), no angry partners
- and more
However, we don't know how much IDCC was asking then though. This tells me that Motorola had great sales people who successfully sold their story to google. IDCC would need few of these guys.
Here is a link showing what google was in for the Motorola deal
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/01/29/google-to-sell-motorola-for-big-loss/
JMHO,
vg_future