Should Google Get Aggressive About Monetizing Android? 168
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google's core search-advertising business is slowing down (despite an uptick in revenue and earnings for the most recent quarter) and a new report suggests that advertising ROI is much higher on iOS than Android. In light of that, it's worth asking whether Google, having dominated much of the mobile-device market with Android, will ever get around to more aggressively monetizing its mobile operating system, and what that could mean to the manufacturers that have been loading the software for free onto their hardware. If Google started charging licensing fees to manufacturers, and attempted to clamp down so that Google Play served as the only hub for Android apps (something that would definitely put it on a collision course with Amazon, which boasts its own Android app store), would it be shooting itself in the foot? Or would the rest of the ecosystem respond in a muted way, considering the sheer size of Google's power and presence?"
Who knows (Score:4, Insightful)
They're too busy drinking Vic's koolaid to worry about anything else actually important. They don't care about the user anymore it's whatever Vic says to try to be like Facebook - when no one even cares.
Are we asking ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as Google is actively dumping MySQL for that very reason, I'd say, "No!"
Re:Are we asking ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. The poster is asking if Google should do like so many previous evil companies and stop innovating, and instead focus on putting the pinch to their clients. Oracle falls squarely in this category. I'm hoping Google will instead decide to continue innovating. They've been pretty damned good at it.
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There is lots google can do within its own sphere, (google Shopper, Google Wallet) without trying to drag more money out of the OS itself.
Samsung is known to be working on its own version of an operating system that does not rely on Android, and
with Ubuntu and Firefox and the bones of Blackberry being ready to step into the fight it would be stupid to piss off
manufacturers.
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with Ubuntu and Firefox and the bones of Blackberry being ready to step into the fight it would be stupid to piss off
manufacturers.
I agree that pissing off the manufacturers wouldn't be the brightest move, however nobody you listed has a product that can step into the space and compete. The smartphone world currently consists of Android and iOS. Anybody and everybody else are just "me too" blips on the radar with no realistic chance of making an impact.
Believe me, I'd love an alternative to Android, but at the moment iOS is the only one, and even it is a significant step down for my usage patterns.
But that's not a company's goal (Score:2)
If they don't focus on making money, their shareholders can sue them. Companies are there to make money, they can't be twisted into innovation factories. If they could we'd probably have free energy and plentiful drinking water by now.
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Re:But that's not a company's goal (Score:5, Informative)
If they don't focus on making money, their shareholders can sue them. Companies are there to make money, they can't be twisted into innovation factories. If they could we'd probably have free energy and plentiful drinking water by now.
Anyone can sue anyone for anything. (Whether or not they can do so successfully, or without being sanctioned, is another story -- I just won a nice attorney fee award from a father (lawyer) son (douchebag) team that sued a client of mine in state court, and then dismissed when we filed the Anti-SLAPP Motion to Strike I'd warned them repeatedly was coming... sigh...)
That said, the "must increase shareholder value" trope is a myth: "This common and widespread perception lacks any solid basis in actual corporate law." http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/6/18%20corporate%20stout/stout_corporate%20issues.pdf [brookings.edu] (p. 4)
If a business wanted to spend three years on R&D, as long as the directors embarked on that path in good faith, with appropriate consideration and care, and reasonably believed that they were acting in the best interests of the company, they'd be able to do so under, e.g., the Business Judgment Rule [cornell.edu].
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But the suit I outlined would be legitimate and would win. Your first link is an opinion piece by a well intentioned lady who wishes corporations didn't have to maximize shareholder value, not a piece of law that states that they don't.
Your second link confirms what I have said. A corporation has to act in good faith to... maximize shareholder wealth.
Re:But that's not a company's goal (Score:4, Insightful)
Smell that. You smell that! FUD son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I lover the smell of FUD in the morning. Appleocalypse Now.
Android is still growing. Places to expand to, the big screen TV, modem/router/home/social server (the next beg thing, the other end of an Android wireless VOIP phone call), the desktop, car, public transport et al. There are so many places to expand into, so many places that can offer up market opportunities for Google. Android ain't the money maker, Android is the wedge the opens up opportunities to make money, it can open up doors and keep them open.
Think about this. How about if people started sharing a portion of their wireless broadband, as a sort of pool of resource for members, a percentage of bandwidth and total traffic, so that wandering around the streets means that the majority if calls go over broadband rather than cellular. There is a lot of scope of what can be done with modem/router/home/social server a whole major market to explore. Why else do you think Google got busted listening in, they were exploring and researching, the next big market.
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How about if people started sharing a portion of their wireless broadband,
People used to do this, but then the media companies started suing them when people 'misused' it.
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However, if the appliance was properly hardwired and preconfigured to all say 20% sharing of available traffic and bandwidth, all organised my the major company supplying the modem/router/home/social server, that's completely different.
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If they don't focus on making money, their shareholders can sue them.
But in a very real sense they are suing themselves!
false. Shareholders sue if execs steal. Goog water (Score:2)
That's simply false. The Free Software Foundation and the Red Cross are corporations. Do you think they focus on making money?
Google has given away over a BILLION dollars to charity.
Shareholders have a cause of action if board members or executives take company assets and convert them to their PERSONAL use in a way that damages shareholders.
The board and executives are serving as representatives of the shareholders, so they aren't allowed to put their personal gain above the interests of the shareholders
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A not-for-profit corporation is an obvious exception. Google is for-profit. Google can only give away money if that ultimately helps profits.
false no matter how many times you say it (Score:2)
Sorry, you're simply mistaken. I've been on the board of directors of nonprofit and for profit corporations. For the profit company, we could, as I explained, do just about anything EXCEPT convert company assets to personal use.
For most for profit corporations, the Articles of Incorporation almost always say the purpose of the corporation is "any lawful purpose" because the board is supposed to abide by the articles. For a nonprofit, the articles are often more specific. So it's actually the nonprofit th
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I think you have that the other way around: If we had free energy, we wouldn't need to worry about making profits.
And by the way, Democracy Now receives funding from Ford, Carnegie Corporation, and George Soros (who has a very outspoken political bias),
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But the people who make profits don't want us to have free energy, they want to make profits. They certainly don't want to selflessly work toward that goal of free energy.
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For example, Kodak built up their brand by making decent cameras and film. Then they destroyed it by selling chinsy shit cameras under the Kodak name as a last ditch effort to keep afloat.
You had me until this nugget. Kodak always sold inexpensive or 'chinsy shit' cameras. Do you remember the Brownie? The problem for Kodak was that their core business; film, chemicals and paper went the way of the buggy whip. Some of us still use film, but most photography is done digitally. And the camera business as a whole, including digital, is in a massive slide as fewer and fewer folks buy stand-alone cameras, opting instead to use their camera phone.
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Re: But that's not a company's goal (Score:2)
Ironically, Kodsk did not promote the digital camera they themselves invented out of fear of cannibalizing their (at the time) lucrative film and photo finishing business.
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As a shareholder, I am not interested only in making money, but also in owning a cool company.
That seems like a very, very poor strategy.
As a shareholder, I am interested ONLY in making money. It is in my role as a customer where I consider whether the products are "cool" or not.
And, yes, this does and has led to many instances of me being a shareholder in one company, while purchasing their competitors products for my own, personal use. If Microsoft stock can make me some money (as it has several times in the past), I'll purchase Microsoft stock, even though I think their OS is pure shit and don'
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Yes. The poster is asking if Google should do like so many previous evil companies and stop innovating, and instead focus on putting the pinch to their clients. Oracle falls squarely in this category. I'm hoping Google will instead decide to continue innovating. They've been pretty damned good at it.
===
As far as I know, Ubuntu, RedHat, Suse linuxes are testing their ARM versions of LInux systems. Gnome is working on an Android clone (compare Gnome 3.10 Desktop to Android). Input is different, but results are similar. Android though offers better application integration/configuration.
Re: Are we asking ... (Score:1)
Fork fork fork.
I never read the summary (Score:1)
But if they are to now, immediately, would be a very good time.
I still don't own an Android device so.. Makes decisions easier :)
Already have (Score:2)
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You can always run pure Android without gapps. I do, and I don't miss gapps one bit.
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Can you recommend some ways to do this?
Re: Already have (Score:2)
Go to the applications settings and disable every Google application, you can even disable the almighty (a lot of permissions and autoupdateable) Google Services applications
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There's a downside: fdroid and co have a small fraction of Google Play's selection, but considering the extent of calling home going on, that quickly becomes a necessity if you want any semblance of privacy. I'd say giving an Android system the credentials of a google account is not so wise a decision.
Okay, but since the post was about gmail... (Score:2)
...what email app are you going to use? Presumably you use some cloud-based 'free' email service. Be it gmail, yahoo, outlook, aol, etc. These are all ad-supported, and if they don't 'read' your mail in order to better target the ads, it's because they haven't (yet) figured out how. And if they haven't figured that out, I'd be just as worried about whether they've figured out how to keep intruders from reading your mail instead...
So, when it comes to ad-supported free services, the standard probably sho
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I think the fear (and probable reality) is that your email is being read to better target ads when you search Google or when you use YouTube or some other Google site that uses display advertising. Of course, you're going to see ads on those sites anyway, so the issue is whether the technology to target those ads is unacceptably intrusive. For now, I'm taking Google's word that this is all done robotically, and no other nefarious use is being made of the resulting information. And if it were, and people
Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
a new report suggests that advertising ROI is much higher on iOS than Android.
That Facebook advertising ROI is much higher on iOS than Android.
Re: Misleading summary (Score:1)
Re: Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Draw your own conclusions and discuss.
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It's because revenue per click is six times higher on iPhone than Android. People spend more, they don't actually visit ads more.
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Either way, the study just confirms something that most people already knew via anecdote or stereotype: iOS users buy into advertising / marketing at a higher rate than other people.
Draw your own conclusions and discuss.
It's simpler than that. Both iOS and Android users buy into advertisement, click on ads, make purchases, etc. The difference is that iOS users are wealthier than Android users on average and therefore spend more money. Apple completely dominates the high-income customer segment of the smartphone market.
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That said, my personal experience running a free app with banner ads on Android has been that I earn about $1.00 per 1000 ad impressions, which is roughly the normal rate for banner ads on iOS from what I've been told.
My users are mostly from northern Europe, USA and Canada, which are of course income regions. Maybe that explains why my app is doing okay even though it's and Android app.
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I'll bet GS4 or HTC One users spend as much as iPhone users. Maybe they need to charge different rates based on the specific device being used. Advertisers aren't going to ditch Android altogether. Like it or not, that's where the mass of users are. Come to think of it, if only the flagship devices were subject to an ad barrage, I'd go with the cheapest Chinese slab of plastic that's powerful enough to get the job done. More likely, you'd get just as many ads - just a lower class of adds on the cheap d
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Fandroids are cheapskates who wants everything free and ad free?
Just saying.
Apple customers are soon parted with their money?
Just saying too.
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that devices with a higher ASP tend to be in the pockets of people with more cash to throw around. I bet subway lines through rich neighborhoods command a higher ad price than on subways lines through blighted areas.
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Could this just be that Android users are more wary of ads... or that iPhone users click on the ads not knowing they are an ad ....?
It's too late for that (Score:4, Interesting)
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what are they gonna do? go back to their crappy proprietary os?
Fork android and keep using it for free. ;) It is already complete, all they would need to do is security maintenance and features they think they'll get a return on.
Not if they know history (Score:5, Interesting)
History is ripe with companies that built a product that does something different, and in ways better, than the competition. And once their product is successful, they try to emulate something that somebody else does, and their product share slowly declines as their users realize there is no longer anything special about the product.
Look at Firefox. It was a faster, lighter, less annoying and extensible browser. Over time, it slowly got bulkier, slower, and in some ways buggier. They annoy users by panicing any time a certificate is signed by an authority not on the list. When Google released Chrome, Firefox decided they wanted to have a Chrome-like super fast release cycle, which hurt extensions. Users are slowly leaving Firefox for other browsers, especially Chrome, as Firefox becomes less and less special.
If Google locks down the OS and prevents users from installing their own applications, then Android will no longer be special. People will still use it, since it's still a smart phone and devices will be cheaper than Apple. But as soon as a competitor comes along that offers what Google used to offer, users will quickly leave, and within several years Android will be a memory.
MITM in the wild (Score:5, Insightful)
They annoy users by panicing any time a certificate is signed by an authority not on the list.
This is desired behavior for SSL. Otherwise, a man in the middle could start his own private CA and issue certs for each site that you view. Bug 460374 [mozilla.org] shows MITM in the wild. If I wanted to verify self-signed certificates through route diversity, I'd install the Perspectives extension. (And I have.)
When Google released Chrome, Firefox decided they wanted to have a Chrome-like super fast release cycle, which hurt extensions.
It hurt native extensions other than NPAPI media handlers, but it led to a more-or-less stable API for writing extensions completely in JavaScript.
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History is ripe with companies that built a product that does something different
History is developed to the point of readiness for harvesting and eating with companies that built a product that does something different? I think the word you're vainly searching for is rife.
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I beg to differ.
I was amased at the difference in speed and bulk when I switched from firefox to Chrome a year or two ago. The difference was like night and day.
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Blame web devs all you want, I agree they are the sh*theads of CS & IT, but the browser needs to be like a production car on city roads. The maintainers (of the road) do crap work, the car has a suspension to handle it
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No, it's IE6 all over again. People are designing websites for the quirks of WebKit. To use a car analogy, it would be like the road maintenance guys deciding that the most popular car was the Toyota Camry, analysing its suspension, then building corrugated roads that match its time constant at the speed limit. If your car's suspension behaves differently, you're in for a rough ride. If Toyota makes a new Camry with different suspension, even if it's better in the general case, it will seem worse becaus
That is what G+ is for... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the ultimate objective of Google+, reducing the number of independant blogs and websites with G+ blogs and pages so keep margins high. With less independent bloggers and websites, ad revenue for these pages will shrink, and Google makes more money.
It is also why people like Mike Elgan and Robert Scoble shill the fuck out of everything Google does, because they know which way the wind is blowing. They are both full of shit, but they didn't get to where they are by not playing well with the big dogs. In return they get free shit from people, web hits and paid speaking gigs, and get to pretend like they are important.
I liked Google much more before they became scumbags like Facebook. Now you can't login to Gmail without it wanting you to create a Google plus account, want your phone number and other contact details. This behaviour along with sharing the email and contact lists to the NSA, getting caught lying about it, now trying to act like a good guy and lobby congress to protect privacy. If Google cared so much about users' privacy they would have lobbied before the Snowden leak.
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Google makes an enormous amount of money through ad space on independent blogs and websites, so no. They're a horizontal company, not a vertical one: where there's ad space, they want to be there. G+ is a reaction to the idea that Facebook, a vertical company, might replace those blogs and sites.
Google should pay down (Score:1)
Android is just Linux + mobile UI + Java. If Google were to charge manufacturers for Android OS, shouldn't Oracle be within its rights to charge for Java on Android?
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Already bad both ways (Score:2)
So casual users and hardcore users getting screwed.
Android phones aren't much different from iPhone except you can go outside the walled garden, which means you developers will be able to sell their apps even if they compete with "official" offerings. You can disable updates. Etc.
Android with AOSP is WONDERFUL, with it broken... I'm waiting for the Ubu
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Why can't you install Google Apps on AOSP? Can't you just flash the gapps zip?
If they monetize... (Score:2)
...Microsoft will have more than a snowball's chance in Hell of getting more marketshare with their mobile OS. There is such a thing as eating your seed corn, and monetizing Android would be exactly that. Yeah, they'd get a few million bucks for this quarter at the expense of advertising revenue and marketshare. And they would be lucky to break even on earnings and then lose in the long run.
--
BMO
Free and Open is Android's strength (Score:3)
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I bought my Android phone for almost the same cost as an iPhone...but I didn't buy on price, I bought on features, and I love it. The latest iOS is very similar to the Samsung customizations...to quote my nephew who hates iOS7, "If I'd wanted a Samsung, I'd have bought a Samsung." Well, I wanted a Samsung, and bought one. Open is very important to me. Lack of ads is very important to me. I stopped using AOL when they had blinking ads. (well, not really, I stopped using their client, and switched to web
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Android is popular because any manufacturer can make a fully functional phone for very little development cost. Free is a strength, not a weakness. Microsoft has a closed proprietary phone and it isn't doing well at all.
As an upside to keeping their cards close to their vest, they have easily rolled out a "fuck your OEM/carrier, here's a dev preview directly from us if you're not afraid of voiding your warranty", and it's not reported to be causing many problems to people trying it.
Google cannot push an update for the above-hardware parts of Android and expect everything to work, because the device vendors have been tweaking those as well. So the tinkerers have to use third-party mods like Cyanogen, or stick with a Nexus.
It is a win-win proposition for everyone and that is why it does so well.
I
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Google cannot push an update for the above-hardware parts of Android and expect everything to work, because the device vendors have been tweaking those as well. So the tinkerers have to use third-party mods like Cyanogen, or stick with a Nexus.
But what you're forgetting is that the tinkerers have those options with the Android phones, where they don't with the Windows phones. Sure, some of those users don't; but these days it's pretty well-known whose phones you should buy if you want stuff like that.
The summary is pure flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
The title of the first FA is:
Google earnings beat estimates, but Motorola losses keep growing
The second FA is strictly about Facebook ads. It says:
One caveat that Slagen offered, however, is that the data changes with industry, and that gaming and e-commerce industries, for instance, did not see the same kind of massive iPhone/Android gulf in ROI.
The summary stinks of typical anti-Google FUD.
Google beat earnings estimates. Google's Android OS drastically beat expectations on how soon it would totally dominate the smartphone market. So some asshat suggests that these results mean Google is doing poorly and it is only a matter of time before Google joins Apple and Microsoft (and others) by turning to the dark side.
Having a dominate market share in the smart phone sector is HUGE. Google's plan for Android was to make sure they would not get shut out of the smart phone ads business. The plan far exceeded expectations all around.
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Not only was Motorola a money loser, Android loses money in other ways. Microsoft lovesAndroid. Not as much as Windows Phone, but because it gets patent royalties on every Android phone sold.
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What good is "dominance" if you're not making money?
Google doesn't even try to make money on Android, so that question shows how much you miss the point. Google makes money on web services, and the goal of Android was to have tons of smartphones connected to their services constantly. Android has been very successful at that, along with making sure they aren't beholden to Apple in order to do it. Although I'm sure Google would prefer people used Android over the iPhone, it doesn't really matter to them as long as they are using both platforms to connect to G
Re:The summary is pure flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Android is not Motorola. If Motorola is losing money it doesn't follow that Android is. The cost for deploying Android was relatively small. The advertising revenue has got to be enormous.
By your logic Microsoft should have stopped making their mobile OS after they burned Nokia to the ground or after the early failures of their surface tablet. Not everything Google touches turns into gold (like Android did). Sometimes it is difficult for software companies to get into the hardware business. It is not unusual to start out with years of losses. Also, you are probably ignoring what Google gained when they acquired the Motorola patents. Their patent portfolio was thin and they and their hardware partners were getting hammered by software lawsuits. The Motorola portfolio gives them ammunition to shoot back and it also opens the door to cross license agreements.
Trying to identify Android with Motorola seems like a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the situation in order to make Android look like a failure instead of the rip-roaring success it actually is.
Google's plan for Android was to make sure they would not get shut out of the smart phone ads business. The plan far exceeded expectations all around.
Yes by paying Apple $1 billion a year for being the default search engine on iPhones....
First, the dominance of the Android OS in the marketplace has very little to do with paying Apple to use the Google search engine. That was a totally separate deal and I'm sure Google made plenty of money on that deal. It's not like they were paying Apple to take a dive and back out of the smartphone market. Second, the article you linked to was from 2011, back when Android was just starting its meteoric rise to dominance. It would be interesting to see what the new numbers are now that Android is the big kid on the block. As I said before, the whole point of Android was so they wouldn't be beholden to the likes of Apple.
You seem to be grabbing at straws and non-sequiturs in an attempt to spin Android's incredible success as a massive failure. Have you considered a career as a political consultant?
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Android is not Motorola. If Motorola is losing money it doesn't
follow that Android is.
Motorola's losses show other players in the market either that being an Android OEM is unprofitable even if it's Google itself, or that Google is willing to sustain losses to better compete with other Android OEMs. Neither interpretation bodes well for other manufacturers using Android.
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The whole purpose of buying Motorola was not that they wanted to get into the hardware market, they were trying to protect Android from patent lawsuits from third parties and ironically enough from Motorola suing other Android manufacturers.
Saying that Motorola has nothing to do with Android is like saying that you shouldn't inclu
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The whole purpose of buying Motorola was not that they wanted to get into the hardware market, they were trying to protect Android from patent lawsuits from third parties and ironically enough from Motorola suing other Android manufacturers.
Citation? Google said they wanted to use Motorola to explore and demonstrate how to tightly integrate the Android OS with hardware. It was to be Android done right, just like their Chromebook was to be ChromeOS done right.
Saying that Motorola has nothing to do with Android is like saying that you shouldn't include the cost of a $20,000 security system to protect a $10,000 investment.
It is still not fair to charge all of Motorola's expenses to Android. A lot of it is the cost of a software company entering a hardware market. It is EXTREMELY unfair to at the same time ignore all the ad revenue generated by Android in order to reach your ridiculous conclusion that An
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http://www.google.com/press/motorola/ [google.com]
"Motorola Mobilityâ(TM)s patent portfolio will help protect the Android ecosystem. Android, which is open-source software, is vital to competition in the mobile device space, ensuring hardware manufacturers, mobile phone carriers, applications deve
Is this a article Joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Google stock hits a record on its quarterly results...Jumping 8% in after hour trading. Its ad revenue despite what the article implies grew 17% year-over-year. That is up from its 15% growth in the second quarter.
But the reality is Googles growth is in "Other" revenue; which grew 85% thanks to sale of Apps...sound like they are monetizing Android even without advertising.
Graph showing revenue by revenue source http://b-i.forbesimg.com/roberthof/files/2013/10/Screen-shot-2013-10-17-at-1.45.11-PM.png [forbesimg.com]
Which is better? (Score:2)
Why is "monetizing" OS still = "clamping down"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it that in 2013 the majority of discussions about generating revenue using a free/libre/open source strategy are still focused on "clamping down" and other zero-sum game thought patterns? Haven't we shown yet that there are not only strategies to generate revenue with open source that don't involve trying to control everything, but also that these strategies can be more successful in the long run? The type of "collision course" competition that the OP mentions is strategy thinking from the 70s and 80s. We're past that. We can do better.
I think a more interesting question to ask is: "How can Google generate revenue from Android while continuing to nurture the ecosystem and helping other stakeholders also continue to benefit from its success?". Facing challenging questions and trying to solve them is far more interesting than simply assuming that there is no solution, especially when anecdoctal evidence suggests otherwise.
Disclaimer: I'm doing my doctoral research in strategic management in the area of open source strategy, so my perspective is necessarily biased. Some of my work can be found at http://osstrategy.org/ [osstrategy.org]
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Everybody sees a win in tracking you. What if the telco can offer to keep all that data sealed off in 'their' branded phone while letting users just use Google maps, email, chat via a browser with a huge user base of free existing apps and pay software too?
All telco/isp branded, less cash flow out to the USA?
The teclo could on
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How much do you pay to use Google's search engine ... how much do they make from it ...
Of course ROI for iOS ads is higher! (Score:5, Interesting)
Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.
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It's easily a big disparity. . Their ad click-through rates are 2.5 times as high as Android, And we're talking about a platform that is outsold 4:1 by Android. [anthillonline.com]
The big problem is that on Android, you can
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So perhaps that's the first thing Google needs - figure out if they're using flagship phones and sell premium ads for those users.
Or, you know, just not give a shit at all, because the current strategy is doing fine, thanks, which is why Google just had a major stock price spike.
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This is a key point; though google do let you target devices:
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722028 [google.com] and cariers.
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Or, perhaps, people who are easily influenced by advertising tend to buy iOS products.
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Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.
True, in addition to that Apple does a lot to maintain the image in the minds of the customers that the iPhone is the ultimate smartphone and that it is the default and correct choice for high income and upper medium income people.
There is no way that Google could do the same for Android in general, but Google could make a premium brand of Android devices and try to market those. By premium I don't mean something like their reasonably priced Nexus series of devices, those are wonderful in terms of value for
Post NSA, recall the desktop (Score:2)
That reduces the userbase to a vast trendy herd. As many other telco makers have found, that vast trendy herd is cheap and fickle.
The other aspect is code been 'open' 'free' and i.e. 'not MS, Apple'. That has helped a lot with the branding propaganda.
With MS and Apple you knew what kind of walled garden you where buying into. To alter aspects of the open usersbase experience mid generation is a hard sell.
To alter t
KitKat? (Score:2)
Any one else seriously annoyed by this... something that entirely shouldnt matter? Dunno why, but it does.
I havent seen it, sounded too depressing / prescient, but I imagine this to be in the vein of Idiocracy [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org].
Advertising ROI (Score:2, Insightful)
Stupid question (Score:2)
One day Android will lose its market share and it'll be the first sign i
Samsung (Score:2)
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That is a very interesting concept.
But I'm not sure this serves Google any better than dropping Android entirely and partnering with Apple. Isn't it the single-vendor bake-in that led them to do Android in the first place?
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That is a very interesting concept.
But I'm not sure this serves Google any better than dropping Android entirely and partnering with Apple.
The advantage for Google is they are partnering with a hardware oriented company. Google brings the software and infrastructure to the table and the two can leverage their individual strengths to build the total system. Unlike Apple which does both hw and sw, each has complementary strengths and are not dealing with a partner that may decide to go it alone later without a significant investment in capabilities.
Isn't it the single-vendor bake-in that led them to do Android in the first place?
True, they worried about Apple entering the search market if the iPhone became the predominant sma
Why change anything? (Score:2)
I just read in another article that the Nexus 5 will sell for $349. That must be at or below the cost of production, comparing to similar models and iPhones of like generation.
So Google can sell phones for zero profit, and then make their money how? *IS* it advertising? Or is it apps and media? Or nothing at all, they just want to take over the market?
It seems to me that they're best off capturing share until the ad revenue means the bottom line is negative. Then even a few pennies per box will mean real in
Odd this being asked after MS starts dual booting (Score:2)
Talk of monetizing the Android, a week after MicroSoft decides to give
it's phone software away; in hope many will select the dual bootable Windows
over Android.
I didn't post this, then today I read "Google shares touch $1,000 for the first time ever"
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101093044 [cnbc.com] a surge in mobile and video advertising that helped drive quarterly revenue up 23 percent.
Google seems to be doing rather nicely, thank you
Google has started doing small things that tick me off, but two request one for each accoun
The Hidden Driver (Score:2)
Google's ROI on advertising on its products will perennially be lower on iOS than Android, simply because on Android they have OS development costs to factor in
And this will lead you to understand exactly how Google intends to increase ROI. If you can't get more clicks, you can adjust the other factor decreasing ROI downward...
Re: (Score:2)
quite right, Google monetizes the users, they are product. Android is just one thing that helps monetize users, its a fish hook for various bait called apps.
whomever wrote this article is clueless about Google's business model
Re:They do (Score:5, Interesting)
No. That is the difference with google; other companies track you and sell your information. Google tracks you, and targets and sells the ads themselves, and don't sell your info. You're the product, but your information isn't being sold. They leverage their position to sell your behavior (clicks) instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure now. But as we have seen countless times in the past, all it takes is changing the TOS and you are screwed. When times get harder for Google as it will, because it eventually happens to every tech company, see how long that policy lasts.
This is the same Google that tried to monetize everyones photos less than a week ago, and backed down (this time) because it pissed off so many people.
Google is great at promoting the rainbows and unicorn bullshit, I am just surprised so many still fall for it.
Re: (Score:2)
That scenario would only come up if google loses so much market share they're not one of the top ad sellers. That is unlikely, because google has cash and strategy to buy up some percent of successful competitors.
Re: (Score:2)
Unlikely, but not by much...Yahoo beats Google in traffic for first time since 2011 [cnn.com].
Unrooted device is UNROOTED ... dy (Score:2)
Most android users (all except the "lusers") use my HOSTS file to block advertisements
You need root to edit hosts on Android. And if you define "lusers" as Android users without root, I suspect they greatly outnumber Android users with root.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's perfectly ok to sell Android and Linux according to the GPL, the license used by Linux.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney [gnu.org]