Google said it has closed its $1.1 billion acquisition for a part of HTC, including the group that worked closely with Google on its Android-powered Pixel smartphones.

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As announced last fall, the agreement, which sees more than 2,000 HTC employees joining Google, also gives Google a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

The deal enters play as Google’s hardware business, which recently introduced products such as the Google Home Mini, enters its third year.

“These new colleagues [from HTC] bring decades of experience achieving a series of  ‘firsts’ particularly in the smartphone industry—including bringing to market the first 3G smartphone in 2005, the first touch-centric phone in 2007, and the first all-metal unibody phone in 2013,” Rick Osterloh, SVP of hardware at Google, explained in this blog post. “This is also the same team we’ve been working closely with on the development of the Pixel and Pixel 2.”

With the deal done, Google will also be expanding its footprint in the Asia Pacific region, with Taipei, Taiwan, becoming the largest Google engineering site in that region, Osterloh added.