How Google sold Motorola at a loss and came out ahead

I keep reading articles that say Google is losing money by selling Motorola Mobility to IBM's favorite dumping ground for used assets, Chinese manufacturer Lenovo. This is simply wrong.

Yes, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2011. Yes, the company intends to sell much of it to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. But the simple math that yields a $9.59 billion loss is missing a few details.

First, when Google bought Motorola, it wrote off an existing loss against tax, yielding a benefit of perhaps $6.6 billion. Then Google sold Motorola's set-top box division for $2.35 billion plus stock from acquirer Arris. Add those together and Google is only $640 million out of pocket, if that. But there's more.

That $640 million bought some great assets. Google is keeping Advanced Technology and Products, the patent and innovation-generating group that's working on cool projects like the Ara modular phone. Google also acquired a substantial patent portfolio from Motorola, only a fraction of which is going to Lenovo with Motorola. Before this, Google was weak on mobile patents.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-google-sold-motorola-loss-and-came-out-ahead-235386