Google is about to spend half of Apple’s annual marketing budget promoting Moto X

Google’s forthcoming, Samsung-killing Moto-X Android “superphone” is also going to have a super-size advertising budget of up to half a billion dollars, reports the Wall Street Journal. That’s half as much as the $1 billion Apple spent advertising all of its products in 2012.

So why is Google—or technically its subsidiary, Motorola, going so crazy with the ad spend? Probably because the Moto X is up against Samsung’s unbelievably huge marketing budget, which topped out at $4 billion in 2012.

Google’s spend is on par with what Samsung spent on advertising its smartphones in the US in 2012—$402 million—and what Microsoft spent advertising the launch of Windows 8—$1 billion. Clearly, Google/Motorola views the launch of the Moto X as a tentpole event—something similar to Samsung’s new phone launches and Microsoft’s reboot of its signature software.