"We share revenue on search, not on mobile applications. The same is true for non-Android devices that use Google as the default search engine."
ie. yes, they get advertising revenue from apps, but it is NOT is Android-specific. App developers can use Google advertising on Blackberry or iPhone apps as well, and Google in fact has several native apps (Google Voice Search, Google Earth) in the iPhone, etc.
In fact, they even have an AdSense developer kit for iPhone (as well as Android, of course!) I'm sure they'd be happy to support Palm's (HP's?) WebOS, etc if they ever became relevant.
Google does not get revenue directly from selling Android. However, they do indirectly get revenue from in-app advertisements, search advertisements, and app store purchases that are all tied to Android phones
Actually, your statement is much more misleading, and in fact mostly untrue. Do your research next time.
"Google denies a report that it is sharing advertising revenues derived from mobile applications on Android smartphones with carrier and handset partners. The search engine maintains the only revenue sharing it engages in is from paying carriers a cut of its search-related advertising sales."
They only make money from good old search advertising revenue, which is really not Android specific anyway - they do the same thing on nearly every handset, including the iPhone.
It's pretty much conventional wisdom in the industry that Google's goal right now is to get an open platform out there to compete with the closed ones like RIM and Apple. Which is very cool. But THEY aren't claiming to be making money on that project right now, so no need for you to pretend they are.
Sure, but there really isn't anything Android-specific about that. They do the same thing with Palm, RIM, and of course Apple. In fact, rumor is they paid Apple about $100M for that deal - hopefully they are getting more than that back in ad revenue from it...
Not saying the iPad will fare as well. The iPhone was a game changer when it was released. It filled a desperate need in the market (a smartphone that wasn't a freakin pain to use).
The iPad however is trying to _create_ a market. That's a lot more difficult. Everybody immediately recognized the usability of the iPhone; hardly anybody has a clue what need in their life (beyond "oooh shiny!") the iPad might sate.
Have you seen the numbers for the iPad? 1 million units in a month - and that's US sales only. At around $600 per unit average, that's $600M in revenue in one month. Given that sales are supply limited right now, and it's launching internationally next week, they could very well see $2B in revenue in ONE QUARTER for a brand new product. That's over 1/3 of the iPhone's *current* revenue for last quarter.
They are not trying to create a market. They already created one. And they barely even had to pay for advertising, the media frenzy did that for them...
I'm not sure if you are serious or being rhetorical, but since it's a good point either way, let's just state it:
Google's Android revenue: 0. Apple's iPhone revenue: over $5B per quarter and growing.
Summary: Apple could not care less about market share, as long as their total sales and revenue keeps growing at the insane rate they have been.
And since the iPad is really just a giant iPhone/Touch (ie uses the same OS)... 1M units in 30 days is probably about $600M revenue for their latest product - in a month. Yikes.
Eminent domain is not unconstitutional, of course. But (quoting *your* link) it applies only "when an invention is used by or manufactured for the United States." And in any case, it just says the government can't "infringe", not that it doesn't have to pay for the license. And even so, it has no bearing on companies selling goods to individuals.
Before you comment, read the OP next time - you're not even talking about the relevant point. His proposal was that a law be passed invalidating the patent for EVERYONE (which I assume also means the govt doesn't have to compensate). Without that compensation, it's unconstitutional, since it violates the 5th Amendment.
(And after all this, I'm not saying his proposal wouldn't actually be a good thing, as long as companies were given a chance to state their patent claims upfront. I'm just saying that it's not remotely possible and would probably be laughed out of Congress and the Supreme Court...
First, trying to enact a vague law that blanket invalidates a specific set of already-granted patents would pretty obviously be declared unconstitutional (not that it would ever pass anyway).
And more importantly - it's taken decades to try to get patent law even somewhat aligned internationally. Legislation of a single country isn't going to do any good, it would have to be done through dozens of laws plus even more painful international treaties...
Well, I have unlimited 3G data (at ~2mbps?) for $30/mo. I also have unlimited 20Mbps+ broadband for $60/mo. That's what happens when you have 4 competing wireless services and 3 competing broadband services. The big 3 markets that make up 90% of console game sales (North America, Japan/Korea, Western Europe) are all pretty competitive with that.
Though I'm not sure how this devolved to the interests of wireless carriers. My point was that the *game companies* will optimize their costs for the big markets, and they don't really care much about "areas unserved by cable and DSL". Hence digital distribution will continue to dominate on cost and convenience, with optical disks serving those without adequate Internet connections. Flash will NOT be a mainstrema option...
As you mentioned, "game assets keep increasing". Games on App Store or Xbox Live Marketplace are nowhere near Blu-ray size or even DVD size. Otherwise, it would be impossible to download them in some areas, as they would exceed the 5 GB per month cap common in satellite, 3G, and anglophone-southern-hemisphere Internet access contracts.
Well, I think it's more likely that those services will adapt to modern times before game companies will prefer adding an extra $1 to each software sale, let alone the $10+ that an 8GB Flash costs over a DVD. And they sure aren't going to change their whole online distribution model to accommodate that 1% of their market in Australia...
There are *legal* movie streaming services (VUDU, CinemaNow, Amazon) that may use 5GB+ for a single HD movie. Capping at 5GB is just going to keep them in the "digital stone age" for that much longer...
You can't lend a download to a neighbor.
Many people would consider that a benefit... including those that will be making the decisions on this.
Yup. "No more load times" is only going to happen once solid state storage sizes are so huge that assets don't need to be compressed, and so fast that it's as efficient to access them from the storage as it is from RAM.
And given that RAM access speeds are always increasing as well, and as storage increases game assets keep increasing to fill them up, I don't see this happening any time soon.
And for small games that don't have these limits? I can download an entire iPhone or XBox Live game over my broadband connection in seconds. Why would I ever want to deal with physical cartidges!?
Now it covers both the researchers AND the subjects interviewed.
Re:You signed away this "right" by picking Apple.
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Flash Is Not a Right
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· Score: 1
That is true. But if there is one inalienable consumer right that I *do* agree with - it's the right to bitch about things you don't like. Sometimes companies even listen.
Even Apple sometimes listens - they just would never admit it, since that would fly in the face of their "we know better than you do" design mentality (and that arrogance, in fact, is also part of why people get so worked up when they disagree with Apple decisions).
Re:You signed away this "right" by picking Apple.
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Flash Is Not a Right
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Exactly, but TFA is one big strawman.
That's exactly how I was going to describe it. I am solidly in the camp that thinks Apple's business practices around this whole debate have been deplorable, but I haven't seen anyone claiming they had any inherent RIGHTS one way or the other in the matter.
Not any serious developers, at least. I'm sure there are plenty of Internet trolls saying things like that, but if he's arguing against trolls he lost before he started.
No, that is NOT the discussion. RTFA. It's about a quote from Steve Jobs, arguing that Apple will be supporting H.264 over Theora, largely in reference to the devices Apple is now making more than 40% of their profit on, ie the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, which support H.264 decoding in both their browsers and, oh, those little insignificant apps like Youtube, Slingbox, Netflix, ABC Video, and ANY OTHER VIDEO STREAMING APP.
And all of those new TVs and BD players that also play Youtube, Vudu, Netflix (using Flash or native app) etc.
Adoption is not just (or even primarily) about putting some codec in a web browser, it's about encoding CONTENT with that codec. Otherwise it's useless.
I agree with pretty much everything you said except the last two sentences...
The problem is that between smartphones, set-top boxes, and game consoles there are now literally hundreds of millions of embedded devices with hardware support for H.264 but not VP8 or Theora (not to mention many millions more PC graphics cards with H.264 acceleration). With all of that inertia, it's going to be very hard to generate enough demand to convince the chip manufacturers to support those other codecs.
Google would have to use VP8 *instead* of H.264 for YouTube, etc, and there's no way that will happen as they would lose hundreds of millions of supported devices. They will have to encode in VP8 *as well as* H.264, and if both formats are available, what reason is there to add hardware support for VP8?
You guys are both confusing the hardware vs runtime here...
XNA only runs on Microsoft OSes/platforms. Yes, the XBox 360 is a Microsoft platform.
The XBox 360 does NOT require all apps be written with XNA - it's just one API/runtime that developers can use. Developers are still free to use their own platform abstractions, and write in C or C++ instead of (XNA's) C#. You don't really think EA ports all of it's games directly to the Xbox APIs without using an abstraction layer (which is what the Apple SDK license now requires), do you?
XNA is just an API and runtime. Yes, it happens to exist only Microsoft OSes. But Microsoft doesn't require that ALL games that run on its operating systems are written with XNA, which is effectively what Apple is doing.
everyone should obviously support both if they can and Theora if they can't
That assumes legal issues are the primary factor. As many have said before, and the Microsoft blog reiterates - adoption of video codecs right now is more about current and future hardware support than patent issues. H.264 is the standard for all satellite and cable TV distribution, the chosen codec for all of the biggest Internet streaming serfvices, as well as supported in hardware on nearly all modern smartphones. Mainstream adoption of another codec will require its implementation by the set-top and mobile chip manufacturers, and re-encoding of the majority of current Internet content. Basically, until you convince Broadcom, Conextant, Intel, MediaTek, Marvell, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Youtube/Google, Netflix, VUDU, Amazon, etc - don't expect anything to change.
No they aren't. They support H.264 video decoding in hardware, and don't have enough CPU power to decode Theora or VP8 in software. Who said anything about HTML or Flash?
Have you ever heard of, oh, the iPhone, Droid, Nexus One, Pre, or any number of smartphones numbering close to 100 million by now? They all have hardware H.264 support, and they all have players/apps that stream H.264. That's exactly what YouTube is doing in their app.
Though even if that were not the case, you'd still be completely wrong, since both the iPhone and Android OS support HTML5 anyway.
It's true that some embedded SoCs have firmware/microcode flexible enough to support other codecs, but unfortunately the TI OMAP is not used in any of the 100M+ H.264 capable STBs in the US or the majority of the popular smartphones that are relevant today (they are just not cost effective compared to a more custom approach).
And I admit it is *possible* (but not guaranteed) that some of the mainstream STB/phone SoCs could be reprogrammed for future codecs - but why? There just isn't any motivation (ie MONEY) to do that engineering work. Like I said before - now not only does Google have to decide it's worth it to them to spend huge amounts of money and effort to support a new codec, but Broadcom, Conexant, Samsung, ST, NEC, Sigma, MediaTek, etc - ALL have to decide it's worth it as well...
If Google wanted to make a statement to support it, they probably could.
But they will have to continue H.264 encoding to support the huge number of existing devices (and future devices, since they will all include H.264 support as well, but not necessarily VP8). Would they really decide to re-encode half a billion video streams in an optional format when they already have to support H.264? Maybe, but I'm skeptical...
Oh, and I am using Chrome right now, thank you very much;)
They need to move fast, clean VP8 up and push it into Chrome, Android and youtube.
But adding support for it in a browser is really only relevant to PCs. The big problem with Theora or VP8 adoption is that H.264 is already implemented in hardware on a couple hundred million cell phones and set top boxes.
And actually, given that fact, the patent licenses have already been paid for, so there is no additional cost to the end user. AND, it has been de-facto adopted by pretty much all major Internet video streaming services as well as the codec used by Dish Network, DirectTV, and all cable companies that I know of. The amount of inertia to overcome is pretty overwhelming...
Except that to get into a decent college kids are also expected to do a couple hours of extra-curricular activities a day as well. Throw in a sport, band/orchestra, newspaper/yearbook, theater/forensics, or a couple misc. clubs and a lot of kids probably don't get home until 6-7pm. Add in 3 hours of homework a night and they barely have time for dinner, let alone a video game. It's a pretty brutal schedule, to be honest.
Then again, there are a lot of kids who don't bother with extracurricular activities OR homework. Those are usually the ones still playing video games in their parent's basement for many years afterwards.
Have to admit, I played a lot more video games after college than I ever did as a student. Probably not coincidentally, I can now afford to financially and time-wise...
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I guess that wasn't clear/enough context. There is of course more to the article and to Google's quoted statements...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Denies-Revenue-Sharing-For-Android-Mobile-Apps-336067/
Here's another key bit, and my point:
"We share revenue on search, not on mobile applications. The same is true for non-Android devices that use Google as the default search engine."
ie. yes, they get advertising revenue from apps, but it is NOT is Android-specific. App developers can use Google advertising on Blackberry or iPhone apps as well, and Google in fact has several native apps (Google Voice Search, Google Earth) in the iPhone, etc.
In fact, they even have an AdSense developer kit for iPhone (as well as Android, of course!) I'm sure they'd be happy to support Palm's (HP's?) WebOS, etc if they ever became relevant.
http://www.google.com/ads/mobileapps/
Google does not get revenue directly from selling Android. However, they do indirectly get revenue from in-app advertisements, search advertisements, and app store purchases that are all tied to Android phones
Actually, your statement is much more misleading, and in fact mostly untrue. Do your research next time.
"Google denies a report that it is sharing advertising revenues derived from mobile applications on Android smartphones with carrier and handset partners. The search engine maintains the only revenue sharing it engages in is from paying carriers a cut of its search-related advertising sales."
They only make money from good old search advertising revenue, which is really not Android specific anyway - they do the same thing on nearly every handset, including the iPhone.
It's pretty much conventional wisdom in the industry that Google's goal right now is to get an open platform out there to compete with the closed ones like RIM and Apple. Which is very cool. But THEY aren't claiming to be making money on that project right now, so no need for you to pretend they are.
Sure, but there really isn't anything Android-specific about that. They do the same thing with Palm, RIM, and of course Apple. In fact, rumor is they paid Apple about $100M for that deal - hopefully they are getting more than that back in ad revenue from it...
Not saying the iPad will fare as well. The iPhone was a game changer when it was released. It filled a desperate need in the market (a smartphone that wasn't a freakin pain to use).
The iPad however is trying to _create_ a market. That's a lot more difficult. Everybody immediately recognized the usability of the iPhone; hardly anybody has a clue what need in their life (beyond "oooh shiny!") the iPad might sate.
Have you seen the numbers for the iPad? 1 million units in a month - and that's US sales only. At around $600 per unit average, that's $600M in revenue in one month. Given that sales are supply limited right now, and it's launching internationally next week, they could very well see $2B in revenue in ONE QUARTER for a brand new product. That's over 1/3 of the iPhone's *current* revenue for last quarter.
They are not trying to create a market. They already created one. And they barely even had to pay for advertising, the media frenzy did that for them...
I'm not sure if you are serious or being rhetorical, but since it's a good point either way, let's just state it:
Google's Android revenue: 0.
Apple's iPhone revenue: over $5B per quarter and growing.
Summary: Apple could not care less about market share, as long as their total sales and revenue keeps growing at the insane rate they have been.
And since the iPad is really just a giant iPhone/Touch (ie uses the same OS)... 1M units in 30 days is probably about $600M revenue for their latest product - in a month. Yikes.
Eminent domain is not unconstitutional, of course. But (quoting *your* link) it applies only "when an invention is used by or manufactured for the United States." And in any case, it just says the government can't "infringe", not that it doesn't have to pay for the license. And even so, it has no bearing on companies selling goods to individuals.
Before you comment, read the OP next time - you're not even talking about the relevant point. His proposal was that a law be passed invalidating the patent for EVERYONE (which I assume also means the govt doesn't have to compensate). Without that compensation, it's unconstitutional, since it violates the 5th Amendment.
(And after all this, I'm not saying his proposal wouldn't actually be a good thing, as long as companies were given a chance to state their patent claims upfront. I'm just saying that it's not remotely possible and would probably be laughed out of Congress and the Supreme Court...
First, trying to enact a vague law that blanket invalidates a specific set of already-granted patents would pretty obviously be declared unconstitutional (not that it would ever pass anyway).
And more importantly - it's taken decades to try to get patent law even somewhat aligned internationally. Legislation of a single country isn't going to do any good, it would have to be done through dozens of laws plus even more painful international treaties...
Well, I have unlimited 3G data (at ~2mbps?) for $30/mo. I also have unlimited 20Mbps+ broadband for $60/mo. That's what happens when you have 4 competing wireless services and 3 competing broadband services. The big 3 markets that make up 90% of console game sales (North America, Japan/Korea, Western Europe) are all pretty competitive with that.
Though I'm not sure how this devolved to the interests of wireless carriers. My point was that the *game companies* will optimize their costs for the big markets, and they don't really care much about "areas unserved by cable and DSL". Hence digital distribution will continue to dominate on cost and convenience, with optical disks serving those without adequate Internet connections. Flash will NOT be a mainstrema option...
As you mentioned, "game assets keep increasing". Games on App Store or Xbox Live Marketplace are nowhere near Blu-ray size or even DVD size. Otherwise, it would be impossible to download them in some areas, as they would exceed the 5 GB per month cap common in satellite, 3G, and anglophone-southern-hemisphere Internet access contracts.
Well, I think it's more likely that those services will adapt to modern times before game companies will prefer adding an extra $1 to each software sale, let alone the $10+ that an 8GB Flash costs over a DVD. And they sure aren't going to change their whole online distribution model to accommodate that 1% of their market in Australia...
There are *legal* movie streaming services (VUDU, CinemaNow, Amazon) that may use 5GB+ for a single HD movie. Capping at 5GB is just going to keep them in the "digital stone age" for that much longer...
You can't lend a download to a neighbor.
Many people would consider that a benefit... including those that will be making the decisions on this.
Yup. "No more load times" is only going to happen once solid state storage sizes are so huge that assets don't need to be compressed, and so fast that it's as efficient to access them from the storage as it is from RAM.
And given that RAM access speeds are always increasing as well, and as storage increases game assets keep increasing to fill them up, I don't see this happening any time soon.
And for small games that don't have these limits? I can download an entire iPhone or XBox Live game over my broadband connection in seconds. Why would I ever want to deal with physical cartidges!?
Post subtitle: "Lies, Damn Lies, and..."
Now it covers both the researchers AND the subjects interviewed.
That is true. But if there is one inalienable consumer right that I *do* agree with - it's the right to bitch about things you don't like. Sometimes companies even listen.
Even Apple sometimes listens - they just would never admit it, since that would fly in the face of their "we know better than you do" design mentality (and that arrogance, in fact, is also part of why people get so worked up when they disagree with Apple decisions).
Exactly, but TFA is one big strawman.
That's exactly how I was going to describe it. I am solidly in the camp that thinks Apple's business practices around this whole debate have been deplorable, but I haven't seen anyone claiming they had any inherent RIGHTS one way or the other in the matter.
Not any serious developers, at least. I'm sure there are plenty of Internet trolls saying things like that, but if he's arguing against trolls he lost before he started.
No, that is NOT the discussion. RTFA. It's about a quote from Steve Jobs, arguing that Apple will be supporting H.264 over Theora, largely in reference to the devices Apple is now making more than 40% of their profit on, ie the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, which support H.264 decoding in both their browsers and, oh, those little insignificant apps like Youtube, Slingbox, Netflix, ABC Video, and ANY OTHER VIDEO STREAMING APP.
And all of those new TVs and BD players that also play Youtube, Vudu, Netflix (using Flash or native app) etc.
Adoption is not just (or even primarily) about putting some codec in a web browser, it's about encoding CONTENT with that codec. Otherwise it's useless.
I agree with pretty much everything you said except the last two sentences...
The problem is that between smartphones, set-top boxes, and game consoles there are now literally hundreds of millions of embedded devices with hardware support for H.264 but not VP8 or Theora (not to mention many millions more PC graphics cards with H.264 acceleration). With all of that inertia, it's going to be very hard to generate enough demand to convince the chip manufacturers to support those other codecs.
Google would have to use VP8 *instead* of H.264 for YouTube, etc, and there's no way that will happen as they would lose hundreds of millions of supported devices. They will have to encode in VP8 *as well as* H.264, and if both formats are available, what reason is there to add hardware support for VP8?
You guys are both confusing the hardware vs runtime here...
XNA only runs on Microsoft OSes/platforms. Yes, the XBox 360 is a Microsoft platform.
The XBox 360 does NOT require all apps be written with XNA - it's just one API/runtime that developers can use. Developers are still free to use their own platform abstractions, and write in C or C++ instead of (XNA's) C#. You don't really think EA ports all of it's games directly to the Xbox APIs without using an abstraction layer (which is what the Apple SDK license now requires), do you?
Come now. We all know comments like that are how the Succession Wars started.
That isn't even a remotely close analogy.
XNA is just an API and runtime. Yes, it happens to exist only Microsoft OSes. But Microsoft doesn't require that ALL games that run on its operating systems are written with XNA, which is effectively what Apple is doing.
everyone should obviously support both if they can and Theora if they can't
That assumes legal issues are the primary factor. As many have said before, and the Microsoft blog reiterates - adoption of video codecs right now is more about current and future hardware support than patent issues. H.264 is the standard for all satellite and cable TV distribution, the chosen codec for all of the biggest Internet streaming serfvices, as well as supported in hardware on nearly all modern smartphones. Mainstream adoption of another codec will require its implementation by the set-top and mobile chip manufacturers, and re-encoding of the majority of current Internet content. Basically, until you convince Broadcom, Conextant, Intel, MediaTek, Marvell, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Youtube/Google, Netflix, VUDU, Amazon, etc - don't expect anything to change.
HTML5 has basically become Apple's straw man argument against Flash.
No they aren't. They support H.264 video decoding in hardware, and don't have enough CPU power to decode Theora or VP8 in software. Who said anything about HTML or Flash?
Have you ever heard of, oh, the iPhone, Droid, Nexus One, Pre, or any number of smartphones numbering close to 100 million by now? They all have hardware H.264 support, and they all have players/apps that stream H.264. That's exactly what YouTube is doing in their app.
Though even if that were not the case, you'd still be completely wrong, since both the iPhone and Android OS support HTML5 anyway.
It's true that some embedded SoCs have firmware/microcode flexible enough to support other codecs, but unfortunately the TI OMAP is not used in any of the 100M+ H.264 capable STBs in the US or the majority of the popular smartphones that are relevant today (they are just not cost effective compared to a more custom approach).
And I admit it is *possible* (but not guaranteed) that some of the mainstream STB/phone SoCs could be reprogrammed for future codecs - but why? There just isn't any motivation (ie MONEY) to do that engineering work. Like I said before - now not only does Google have to decide it's worth it to them to spend huge amounts of money and effort to support a new codec, but Broadcom, Conexant, Samsung, ST, NEC, Sigma, MediaTek, etc - ALL have to decide it's worth it as well...
If Google wanted to make a statement to support it, they probably could.
But they will have to continue H.264 encoding to support the huge number of existing devices (and future devices, since they will all include H.264 support as well, but not necessarily VP8). Would they really decide to re-encode half a billion video streams in an optional format when they already have to support H.264? Maybe, but I'm skeptical...
Oh, and I am using Chrome right now, thank you very much ;)
They need to move fast, clean VP8 up and push it into Chrome, Android and youtube.
But adding support for it in a browser is really only relevant to PCs. The big problem with Theora or VP8 adoption is that H.264 is already implemented in hardware on a couple hundred million cell phones and set top boxes.
And actually, given that fact, the patent licenses have already been paid for, so there is no additional cost to the end user. AND, it has been de-facto adopted by pretty much all major Internet video streaming services as well as the codec used by Dish Network, DirectTV, and all cable companies that I know of. The amount of inertia to overcome is pretty overwhelming...
Except that to get into a decent college kids are also expected to do a couple hours of extra-curricular activities a day as well. Throw in a sport, band/orchestra, newspaper/yearbook, theater/forensics, or a couple misc. clubs and a lot of kids probably don't get home until 6-7pm. Add in 3 hours of homework a night and they barely have time for dinner, let alone a video game. It's a pretty brutal schedule, to be honest.
Then again, there are a lot of kids who don't bother with extracurricular activities OR homework. Those are usually the ones still playing video games in their parent's basement for many years afterwards.
Have to admit, I played a lot more video games after college than I ever did as a student. Probably not coincidentally, I can now afford to financially and time-wise...