Google Bets a Billion Dollars More Brains Can Help Take On Apple

Alphabet unit’s closes deal for HTC smartphone specialists
Google will get infusion of 2,000 engineers from mobile team

A soft toy depicting the Android logo sits in a workspace at Google Inc.'s Kings Cross office in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016. After being criticized for not paying its fair share of British tax, Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit is trying to show it’s a good corporate citizen by offering five hours of free digital skills training to all U.K. residents.Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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By Shelly Banjo and Mark Bergen

January 30, 2018 at 12:15 AM EST

Updated on

January 30, 2018 at 4:23 AM EST

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Google officially closed its $1.1 billion deal with HTC Corp., adding more than 2,000 smartphone specialists in Taiwan to help the search giant chase Apple Inc. in the cut-throat premium handset market.

The deal will help Google design more of its own consumer hardware and could set it up to wade deeper into special-purpose chips -- like Apple. Google’s most recent Pixel model came with a new image processor to improve the device’s camera. More of this "custom silicon" will come in the future, Google’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in an interview.

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