The bigger thing is the IP acquisition. That's largely why they grabbed Moto and then spun it out. With this they can skip the middle step.
From the blog post, seems to be a license.
In the press release of HTC[1]
> Google will continue to have access to HTC’s IP to support the Pixel smartphone family
Is it means HTC only licenses IP to Google, not sells them to Google?
[1]https://www.htc.com/us/about/newsroom/2017/2017-09-21-htc-go...