Two Months Ago

Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang, in an interview with Fortune’s Miguel Helft:

Right after Google bought Motorola [in 2012], I invited [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt to have a dinner at my house. I told him, “If you think you want run the hardware business, you can keep the business; but if you are not interested in the hardware business, we definitely can handle that, take over that.”

He remembered that, and two months ago, he sent me an e-mail. I called him back, and he asked me, “Are you still interested in Motorola?” I said, “Definitely.” We started to discuss it. I went to Silicon Valley many times. [Google CEO] Larry Page invited me to his house to have a dinner. Very quickly — in just two months — we closed the deal.

In other words, right around the time when they started dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the deal to acquire Nest.

★ Friday, 31 January 2014