Amazon is, like Apple, a "sell people stuff at a price they're willing to pay" company, versus a "free but we will auction slivers of your soul" company. Apple makes most of its money up front, Amazon makes most of its money... um no one is quite sure how or if Amazon makes money. Google "gives" away goods and services and makes money selling ads ... like an old fashioned TV network. Not exactly the same thing at all.
Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?
> Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?
Probably a whole lot. When my sister, who would otherwise be in front of a computer at most half an hour a day, can get an android smartphone for 150 euros and idly browse the Web all day, Google makes a shitload of money they wouldn't have if all these people were on cheap nokias.
Don't iPhone users make just as many (probably more) Google searches as Android users? Or do you think that without Android, nobody would have put out cheap smartphones by now?
It's quite possible there wouldn't be cheap smartphones without Android. At least, not ones with a decent browser. Meego imploded on its own, Palm took webOS down with it as a realistic option, and MS would probably never let the word "cheap" attach itself to Windows Mobile. What's left? Openmoko, maybe? And, just as importantly, if you assume the cheap smartphone makers wouldn't gang up and make their own platform, who else might have pushed a new, free, mobile OS other than Google? Funnily enough, the only other company I can think of who might have had a go at it is Amazon. Today I could see Facebook having a go, but where were they 7 years ago?
Then again, markets are funny things. In a world without Android, I can't imagine the expensive iOS ecosystem being the only game in town. Something might have filled the sucking void at the cheap end of the market, but what?
I realise I've effectively written Symbian off here. It's funny, it took me a good 5 minutes to even remember it existed. I suppose we could hypothesise that in a world without Android, the Nokia of 2009-2010 might have seen the light, but I think that's extremely unlikely.
(Not implying you specifically, nor is it necessarily a bad thing...)
Interesting framing and perception - I've never read anyone say that "Mozilla charges Google for being the default Firefox search engine", it's always been "Google pays Firefox to be the default Firefox search engine".
Same result, really, but it's interesting how much of a change it implies, passive vs active, etc.
Actually the move to mobile is hurting Google. People tend not to click on ads while searching from mobile devices as much as they do on desktops. And since people are moving to mobile, Google's ad revenue growth is getting affected.
"the remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees."
When I read that a couple weeks ago, I assumed distribution partners meant carriers, though I guess I don't really know what it means. Also, operating fees probably means Google, so I stand corrected.
Yes but Android cost Google billions more, and occupied the limited attention of key people for years. The evidence is that most android buyers do very little web surfing.
Divide that by the number of owners of each platform. There's your answer. Well, there's part of your answer. Chances are that Android owners are bimodal - some (like me) do a lot of surfing, others very little.
Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?
Android has cost billions but what if Apple and Microsoft shared the mobile market and replaced the default SE with Bing or Yahoo? That was Google's worry and that's why they spent billions for years. That huge expense was essentially hidden by filling web search pages with ads in commercial niches to the point of making them unusable. When earnings grow by double digit questions are few
Google saw that in mobile you only get a seat at the table by owning a platform demanded by customers or by being a carrier. Otherwise, you're just a feature on someone else's product–-something that can easily be swept away. You're thinking along the right lines. Google's decision to develop Android should be evaluated not by whether it has made profit to date, but by the alternatives facing Google at the time.
Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?