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Comment by amitmathew | Hacker News Reader

I figured there must be sensible people within Google trying to fight the good fight. On the surface, it makes business sense to follow the status quo. But I wonder if that's true for the long term. Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models? What if we could get proper demos? What if we could properly interact with our customers and do things like easily issue refunds? I don't know, maybe I'm way off, but I always thought that Play Store revenue should be a lot higher than it is now if Google exhibited some leadership.

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Google doesn’t care about Android’s experience or the Play Store. It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Android had only made Google around $25 billion in profit during its existence. Android was already the dominant platform around then. Apple makes more from Google in mobile by Google paying it to be the default search engine than Google makes from Android.

Android is only a defensive play for Google not a profit center

> only $25 billion in profit

Surely there must be a typo in one of these words? I can’t imagine 25 humongous ones being loose change for any business.

For a company the size of Google making $22 billion on a product from 2010 to 2016 is a nothingburger.

https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-pr...

This is their total net income between 2010 and 2016.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

They pay Apple a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices.

It's a single-digit percentage of what ads make, without much room for growth. I doubt it's a single-digit percentage of technical effort.

Please mark this as accepted answer.

> Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models?

Say Google does the right thing. Enables great apps, charges 4% instead of 30%, everything goes well.

What does Apple do in response? If they do nothing, Android eats their market share. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

But that means they can't do nothing. They'd have to respond in kind; do the right thing too. Which means it's not a competitive advantage for Google. All they do is lose the 30% they're getting right now.

Even worse if Apple is foolish and the move actually succeeds, because then Android gets a real monopoly instead of this duopoly fig leaf they each use to claim they have competition.

This why duopolies are just as bad as monopolies if not worse. We need real competition and barriers to entry low enough that someone without a vested interest in the status quo can actually enter the market.

I dont think the solution is to drop the fee to 4%. My pushback on the Play execs was that we need something unique, that seems fair and recognizes the value that 3rd party and the platforms provide. The 30 / 70 is simple and clean but its not “good” or “fair”. It doesnt mean you cant capture say 20% of app revenue in a way that is good and fair

If Google went to 4% and Apple stayed at 30%, a lot of people would still be buying iPhones and not caring.

Developers would care. For many that difference would double their margins, or quintuple them. People would make apps for Android that didn't exist on iOS, or make them for Android first, or spend more time on the Android version and make it better.

Yes, but consumers of the phones themselves? Anecdotally, I haven't paid money for an app in...5 years or so. So the free apps would still be around, and I guess candycrush and such would get to Android before iPhone, and will be better on Android, but that really isn't going to affect me.

I guess the question is how many phone consumers buy apps (or pay for content in those apps)? And if paid app availability improved (or got worse for their platform), would that affect the next phone they bought.

That’s true, but it would help Google get out from Apple’s shadow on mobile. From a strategic perspective, you want your competitor being forced to make moves because of your actions. Then you get to dictate the next few steps. But for any of that to matter, you have to view mobile as more than another ad platform, which Google doesn’t seem to.

> Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models

Android as a platform is completely at odds with Google as a business, and will continue to be so as long as Google's is only revenue stream is online advertising.

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