Android, Maps, Docs, Gmail, Navigation, Analytics are all (mostly) free.
Everything Google does is about advertising and collecting data. Those two things don’t align with my desires.
They align with the needs and wants of billions of people.
Now Apple might be ahead. But its not hard for them to lose all of that. Apple as of now is not useful to the masses in most countries. Google is.
There is a reason why companies like Dell and Microsoft ruled so much in the 90s to the 2005. Once you exhaust Steve Jobs's established product lines, you are just selling expensive cosmetic shining gadgets offering little in extra value compared to Samsung or Dell. At that time is when Google like companies will outshine Apple.
Scary thing for Apple is the new Macbook Pro already shows some of these problems. Steve Jobs is no more, and its already showing.
In fact one big revolutionary product from Google could change everything for Apple. The raw utility of Google search still far exceeds that of iPhone. And that's just one product. Maps, YouTube, Android etc have very large utility to common masses compared to iPhone.
Dell and Microsoft won when the user is not the customer - enterprise sells. Apple brought in the “consumerization of IT”. People have been predicting the death of Apple and the failure of the iPhone for 8 years. They swore Android and especially Samsung was going to take over. Samsung in fact is seeing price pressure and they are struggling - not Apple.
In fact, a lot could change over the coming years.
>Macbook Pro already shows some of these problems It really doesn't. Apple has their fuckups time to time, like Pippin, G4 Cube, Ping, Maps or 'you're holding it wrong' iPhone 4.
This is a distinction most people don't grasp. I didn't, myself, until recently when a briefing from the legal department resulted in scouring the word "free" from eight web sites and replacing the word with "at no cost."
That said it’s irrelevant. Microsoft is happy to keep the competition alive for Google and I bet they are winning some revenue from their DDG deal, so it’s a win win.
And if DDG gets big enough, and it probably is already, they can develop their own web crawler - because in case you don’t know, it’s the crawling part that’s really expensive.
As an aside: As an engineer, I dislike their walled garden approach; but I love their approach as a consumer. To be frank, most companies have bad taste and poor UX design. Apple doesn't knock it out the park all the time, but their products are consistently good and their design guidelines for iOS apps enforce some of the same quality. So yeah, I'll take a walled garden approach if the garden is beautiful.
Quite often anti-competitive actions are beneficial to customers at the expense of other companies.
As a consumer, I don't give a damn if Apple is "mean" to your business. Learn to compete better.
If these companies are stopping a better product from coming to the market then by all means lets throw antitrust at them; but if your product is just a clone and/or lower quality product that cannot get users, nobody cares.
Sorry, but learn to compete.
There is a major difference between what Microsoft was doing back in 90s and what Apple is doing today.
Not to mention the cut the publishers, wholesellers, and the retail stores use to take when you sold boxed software.
Their cut is the same as Google’s and Steams.
Steam charges 30% to be on its store. Same with PlayStation and Microsoft Store.
Seems like it’s the standard distribution fee.
That would subject each service fee component to competitive quality/demand forces within Apple, e.g. app search, trials/CRM workflow, app distribution. Developers and users can both exert choice on the subset of fees applied to a transaction, so they can provide performance-based feedback to Apple.
Even a monopolist can compete with itself, to improve service and product.
Before that carriers had much higher fees when you sold J2ME apps on feature phones through thier store.
I said it was extortionist, not baseless. Of course they deserve a fee. But it's extortionist in the sense that you have no choice, if you want to sell to worldwide mobile users with deep pockets. Apple also forces as many payments as possible to go through their network, and bans apps that try to take payment outside the store if the app does not provide sufficient justification. In fact, they could just probably charge 50% and developers would keep paying them...
> Steam charges 30% to be on its store
Pretty sure Steve Jobs didn't set the 30% price point by looking at the Steam store, lol. More likely it was the other way around and Steam is 30% because the App Store is 30%...
And what exactly is the alternative option for them there? They can either follow the rules in China or completely lose all of their business. That is on China, not Apple.
Sorry to rain on your paradise, but is there something old-fashioned about using "Double Irish"[1] arrangement to evade legitimate taxes too?
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-cash-mountain-ho...