After striking a $1.1 billion deal back in September, Google has officially closed its acquisition from HTC.
Google says that its deal with HTC is now done and that means that HTC employees will be joining Google. This includes the same team of HTC employees that Google worked with on the Pixel and Pixel 2 smartphones.
With the close of this deal, Google says that Taipei will become the largest Google engineering site in the Asia Pacific region.
HTC has said that while it is losing some of its smartphone talent to Google, it's not exiting the smartphone business. The company previously said that this Google deal "supports HTC's continued branded smartphone strategy" and will help streamline HTC's product portfolio for better operational efficiency and financial flexibility. HTC says that it has "best-in-class engineering talent" working on its next flagship phone.