If Google really bought Motorola for the patents alone, we should expect massive layoffs as they wind down the phone manufacturing business.

If, as many have speculated, Google actually wants to follow Apple into the integrated software/hardware market, then this is a bet-the-company decision that will either see Google mired in a failed merger on the scale of AOL/Time Warner, or if successful it will provide a growth engine for the next decade and badly-needed diversification.

I think it's pretty hard to look at this deal purely from a technical analysis perspective, since no one except a handful of senior staff at Google really know what the plan is.