This could have been part of a Google patent blitz from the start.
Notably, MMI peaked at $36.34 in January. I could see MMI's board thinking it was worth close to $40, given the crappy/insane state of the market.
A company like Google is always in talks with other companies, a deal like this can happen very quickly if you've been having informal talks all along.
The Motorola deal I think is a lot better because it's not just patents, it's a whole hardware company with hands in a lot of pies that Google is in, like cell phones and set-top boxes.
I think they'll get a much better return on their investment into Motorola than they would out of Nortel patents.
It's like the "work shouldn't be fun" crowd -- why the heck not?
It wasn't the first time they did something like that. Their IPO was intended to raise e billion dollars. And why shouldn't it be?
Using fundamental mathematical constants may be unusual, but it's absolutely no more arbitrary than boring "round" numbers with a bunch of zeroes, and it's like a big geek flag waving in the wind.