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Should Google Get Aggressive About Monetizing Android?

Posted by Soulskill on from the i'm-gonna-go-with-no dept.

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?"

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Who knows by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  2. Are we asking ... by briancox2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are we asking whether Google should commit the same enormous Open Source/GPL faux pas that Oracle committed with MySQL?

    Seeing as Google is actively dumping MySQL for that very reason, I'd say, "No!"

    --
    We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
  3. Misleading summary by dinfinity · · Score: 4, 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.

    1. Re: Misleading summary by aaronb1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  4. MITM in the wild by tepples · · Score: 4, 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 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.