Should Google Get Aggressive About Monetizing Android?

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?"

Comments

The summary is pure flamebait

[DrJimbo]

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.

Re:But that's not a company's goal

[crankyspice]

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 (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.