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Comment by confounded | Hacker News Reader

Google’s customers are advertisers, not app developers.

Google took money from the developer in exchange for the performance of a service. The developer is a customer of Google's.

I believe the point parent was trying to make is that advertisers are more valuable customers while app developers, as customers, are expendable.

Those app developers who have been dutifully paying fees to Google may be surprised to discover that they are somehow not also paying customers...

Ancillary customers that Google throws some crumbs to, not the raison d'être of the enterprise.

They have collected billions from developers via their 30% commission on sales and IAPs on their app store, plus the massive volume of advertisements shown in their customers apps for which their split is much more than 30%. Many developers are paying thousands or more a month to Google.

Google's customers include advertisers, and they include people paying them for hosting, and people paying them to buy apps, and people paying them to publish apps, people paying them for online services, people buying their hardware, etc.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419...

Their revenue last year was 136 billions. Even if we charitable assume app developers spend 10 billions per annum in aggregate, that's only 10%. Ancillary revenue.

Android alone accounted for $31b revenue in 2016, according to Oracle, of which $22b was purportedly profit just for 2016. Excluding Android's contribution to their advertising ecosystem, which is another chunk of that $136 billion you mention. That's far more than 10% of their gross profit, but even if it was less why would that absolve Google of responsibility? The % doesn't create the customer the transactions do.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...

Wait. I'm reading that differently.

I read it as saying $31 billion in revenue since Android was released, not in 2016 alone. That was more than 10 years ago.

And of that $31 billion, $22 billion is profit.

Finally, a lot of that revenue came from payments made to Google by handset operators, not app developer fees.

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