"This is an important milestone in the approval process and it moves us closer to closing the deal," Google's vice president and deputy general counsel Don Harrison wrote in a blog post. "We are now just waiting for decisions from a few other jurisdictions before we can close this transaction."
Reuters reported last week that regulators in the United States will soon give their go-ahead on the deal, as well. Many reports have predicted that decision to come later this week.
Harrison said in this blog post that "the combination of Google and Motorola Mobility will help supercharge Android. It will also enhance competition and offer consumers faster innovation, greater choice and wonderful user experiences."
Motorola holds one of the mobile industry's largest collections of patents. Google will be able to produce its own line of smartphones to go with its immensely popular Android platform, thanks to Motorola's extensive network of hardware manufacturing facilities. Motorola is one of the leading producers of Android-based phones.
Google will buy Motorola for a price of $12.5 billion, assuming that the deal gets ultimate approval.
The European Union's antitrust regulators did not impose any restrictions on the acquisition. But Europe's competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia said in a statement that the blessing “does not mean that the merger clearance blesses all actions by Motorola in the past or all future action by Google.”
The Motorola acquisition would be Google's first expansion into the technology hardware business. The search giant has seen waves of antitrust criticism in recent years as it moved into other online sectors, including daily deals and shopping.