It appears this kills any chance of another manufacturer picking up webOS. If HP can't make it work why should anyone else try?

Hindsight is 20/20. Google and Palm could have made a deal. At least then the WebOS team could merge with the ChromeOS team. And Google would have that patent trove for a bargain price. And an in-house manufacturer, too, if that's what it wanted.

Too late for that now. At best Google will get the patents at a significant premium. ChromeOS is too far along to benefit from WebOS. And now Google has Motorola, what would it do with Palm's hardware?