Though Google's proposed purchase of Motorola Mobility has been cleared by Moto's shareholders, it still needs regulatory approval around the world — and the European Commission has temporarily stopped its approval process to collect some additional information. Without going into detail, a Commission spokesperson only said that it was looking for "certain documents that are essential to its evaluation of the transaction," while Google says that the request is "routine." Details on the approval process show that the official stoppage went into place on December 6th; for what it's worth, Motorola had already signaled that it expected the deal to close in 2012, so this doesn't seem to be an entirely unexpected delay — assuming the clock starts back up before too long, of course.