Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really? • The Register

More fun with speculative accounting

"At first glance we've the set-top business, the handset one and the patents. At that first glance it would appear that Google has paid $12.5bn in total, flogged off the two physical businesses for $5.5bn and thus paid $7bn for the patents.
However, if we add in the $3bn cash (possibly retained) and the $6.5bn in tax losses (certainly some used, possibly the rest retained) we can, with a good deal of guessing I agree, make the case that Google has actually made a couple of billion profit on the deal and got those patents for free. It all depends on how good the tax lawyers are and who really wants to posit that Google employs bad ones?"

Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really? • The Register