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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

They pretty much dominate mobile OSes, they have the top used browser, they dominate email.

> "...they dominate email." quick anecdote: I recently went to a small art show where one of the artists had an email signup. 16 out of the 17 addresses were gmail addresses.

> They pretty much dominate mobile OSes, they have the top used browser, they dominate email

There's no direct value in any of those. Google gets very little direct revenue from the things you list nor could they ever hope to transform any of them a significant revenue source in the event their primary revenue stream (ads) went into a downturn.

I don't think you can say the services listed don't drive revenue. Google's growth model for quite a while was to attract and lock in users so that you would have advertiser revenue tomorrow. You could certainly argue that some of their services do this much more effectively than others but maintaining an ecosystem has value in it's own right.

> I don't think you can say the services listed don't drive revenue. Google's growth model for quite a while was to attract and lock in users so that you would have advertiser revenue tomorrow. You could certainly argue that some of their services do this much more effectively than others but maintaining an ecosystem has value in it's own right.

In my view, Chrome and Android are part of a defensive strategy. Imagine a Google without Chrome or Android. Microsoft and Apple (or someone else) would own the devices that users use to access Google services. They could easily choke Google off if they wanted to. Remember how Apple decided Google Voice should be a web app? As much as people say Google is vulnerable, it would be much more vulnerable. Chrome and Android are worth every penny Google spends on them even if they make zero revenue. Plus, with Chrome and Android, Google not only gets a seat in the table for discussions on how to steer the web forward, Google pretty much drives the discussions on how to steer the web forward. For all the talk about Microsoft et al. using sponsorship money to influence FOSS projects like Maria DB, it is far more effective to do things in house (Google Chrome) as opposite to paying an outsider (Mozilla Firefox).

Good point. Google pays billions to Apple because they want their ad words shown to customers of Apple devices.

They don’t have to do that for customers and platforms that use chrome by default.

There's value in the advertising, in the net suite appeal, and in starving any potential competitor of revenue.

But those are not their business. They make no (ok little) money from them. Apple makes as much money from dongles and charger cables. Their business is still AddWords.

That's a strategic choice, I feel, and how you do accounting. Now facebook, on the other hand, ...

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