Yeah, I generally agree with that framing. That’s a good detail about samsung that I was not aware of. But I will say that from an ex-insider perspective — what you describe is mostly a failure.
Google was searching desperately for revenue diversity and was acquiring pretty hard at the time. I think the intent with Moto was to acquire a hardware shop and establish a market leading brand to compete directly with Apple. They eventually arrived at Pixel by building it entirely in-house. That Moto got raided for IP and spun out to Lenovo did not meet those (high) expectations. There was no need for anyone to take a loss but I think Google wanted to make a whole lot of money and did not.
I'll defer to you an insider on the hardware efforts, but the timing of the Motorola acquisition in the immediate aftermath of Google's failed bid[1] on Nortel's patent portfolio made it seem more like a patent-play more than a hardware acquisition. I recall Motorola's then-CEO even threatened to sue Google over patent Android infringement just before the acquisition, so it most certainly wasn't just about building a hardware business.
1. It was a crazy time. The winning consortium - which included Apple and Microsoft - invited Google to join their $4.5B bid; which would have made the patents entirely useless as a defense of Google against Apple or Microsoft. Google wisely declined, but bought Motorola less than a year later for $12B. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/02/google-pi...
Google was searching desperately for revenue diversity and was acquiring pretty hard at the time. I think the intent with Moto was to acquire a hardware shop and establish a market leading brand to compete directly with Apple. They eventually arrived at Pixel by building it entirely in-house. That Moto got raided for IP and spun out to Lenovo did not meet those (high) expectations. There was no need for anyone to take a loss but I think Google wanted to make a whole lot of money and did not.