I don't know how anyone can see selling off a company for $9.5 billion less than you paid for it two years ago as a "smart move". It is prudent to get rid of Motorola now before it eats up even more cash, but the smart thing would have been to never buy the company in the first place.
As noted a half dozen times throughout the comments, they didn't lose 9.5 billion, it's looking more like possibly 2 billion.
But they also had a strong bargaining chip vs Samsung, and will likely reap benefits far exceeding their Moto stake.
My comment was way early in the thread so the dozens of comments saying they didn't lose 9.5 billion didn't exist yet when I posted...
Still, it's a strange/not-so-great move on google's part.
It's sad how a once mighty company is being sold around like a piece of house by some property flippers, and costing the flipper pretty 2 billion too...
