Earlier today we reported that the European Commission blessed the Google-Motorola Mobility deal, and we’re learning that the United States has also given its final seal of approval making the deal complete.

According to a Reuters reporter, the approval has been given a few moments ago:

All clear! Google-Motorola deal approved by Dept of Justice. $GOOG

— Poornima Gupta (@PoornimaGupta) February 13, 2012

The deal has been waiting approval since it was first made in August of 2011. There were concerns that the acquisition would give Google an unfair advantage in the mobile space, especially since it would be grabbing over 17,000 patents currently held by Motorola Mobility.

The price for Motorola’s handset division? A cool $12.5B. Google’s CEO, Larry Page, said in August that this acquisition would help “supercharge the Android ecosystem”:

This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.

The combination of Google and Motorola will not only supercharge Android, but will also enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences. I am confident that these great experiences will create huge value for shareholders.

Along with Motorola Mobility, Google will be acquiring a few active lawsuits, one of which coming from Apple over a Qualcomm wireless transmission patent license. Apple is being sued by Motorola Mobility as well, over technology used in six of its products.

The “will they or won’t they” argument is apparently over when it comes to Google’s monster $12.5B acquisition of Motorola Mobility. According to a report by Reuters, the Department of Justice will soon officially approve the sale.

The deal has been held up since Google announced the bid in August, and immediately threw up red flags to those concerned about possible antitrust issues.

What Google is valuing most in the Motorola deal are the patents that the mobile phone producer holds. Currently, Motorola Mobility is suing Apple over claims of copyright infringement. The suit involves patents used in six Apple products, including the iPhone 4S.

Without a doubt, the acquisition of Motorola by Google will strengthen the company’s position in the mobile space, giving the Android platform a clear advantage. Google has said that it won’t do anything different in the way it handles patent lawsuits than Motorola has in the past, but even that’s a scary thought.

This is certainly not the first time that Google has done a deal involving important patents, as it acquired 217 of them in a deal last month with IBM. At that time, these were the interesting patents the company acquired:

Among those are patents for mobile advertising, reducing strain on wireless networks, rendering web pages on a mobile device, Near Field Communication, mobile OS update delivery, shuttling web apps between devices, semantic social networks, voice search, VOIP and one seemingly very broad patent for a ‘Computer Phone’.

To protect its Android platform, it is said that Google really only needs 18 of the over 17K patents it will be acquiring from Motorola.

At its launch event earlier this month, Murdoch said he expected The Daily to be on all major tablets in the future, but was quoted saying that “last year, this year and maybe next year belong to iPad.”

So it is a bit surprising to hear that the “iPad newspaper” could appear on tablets like Motorola’s XOOM in just a few months time.

For now The Daily is sold exclusively through the Apple store.

Read here for Everything You Need to Know About the Daily’s Launch.