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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?"
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 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.
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.
You can always run pure Android without gapps. I do, and I don't miss gapps one bit.
It's too late for them to even try to monetize Android as attempting to charge for it will just drive their hardware partners down the same path as Amazon or towards other platforms like Ubuntu, Firefox OS, Windows Phone, Tizen, etc. That would be bad for Google as it might mean that fewer people use their services, which means fewer ad views, which means less revenue. I can't imagine that some of their hardware partners are overly thrilled that they've started selling Nexus devices at close to cost and have further eroded their profit margins, so some might be fine with testing other waters if Google wanted to start charging for the OS.
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.
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.
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. A closed source Android would fare just as well. A free platform is just that, a platform. It's up to the manufacturer to launch a profitable business either under or over Android. Under meaning the hardware and over being services provided by the platform. It is a win-win proposition for everyone and that is why it does so well.
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.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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.
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
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/
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.
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.
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.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Return on investment for mobile advertising is less effective on Google devices because Google users are smarter.
There is an important distinction between focusing on making as much money as you can, and focusing on making as much money you can on each of your products. It is in Googles best interest to keep all of the parts of the computer ecosystem they don't directly make money on as free and easy to use as possible, because that will make people spend more time on computers, including the parts that Google makes money on. As such, is is a huge advantage for them to have a relatively open and standadized mobile OS. If they charge the phone producers for android, they risk some of them starting to use their own, incompatible OS.
TL-DR: it might well being Google financial interest to not make money directly on Android. It is my understanding that it isn't that easy to sue a corporation for choosing a different route to make money.
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.
geek. lawyer.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.