Not just 100 engineers, but also a non-exclusive license on HTC patents. Not knowing the terms of the license it's hard to value, but I would suspect it's a significant chunk of the $1B.
$10 million each. Google might think that is an ok deal for the right people. Google market cap ($650 billion) divided by number of engineers (~40k) is $16 million.
>Peter Shen, HTC’s chief financial officer, said that HTC would still employ more than 2,000 research and design staffers after the deal is done, down from around 4,000, according to the New York Times. That makes today’s announcement more of an acquihire of talent than a traditional acquisition of resources.
A lot cheaper than Instagram.
Or whatsapp. But then those were complete acquisitions