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Comment by rrreese | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. As I understand it Google, realising the increased importance of mobile, developed Android to ensure that phone manufacturers would not be able to lock Google's services out, or provide and encourage alternative services. By making their own platform they can push their services to the forefront.

But in doing so they antagonized Apple with whom they had a good relationship, and now find their services being replaced or dropped (first maps and now YouTube, and iOS 6 and Mountain Lion not including Google sharing options).

Given that Google makes four times as much money from iOS then it does Android [1] I wonder if this was a good plan? If Apple replaced Google search with Bing as the default, it would have to hurt a lot. On the other hand if Apple did all this anyway but Google didn't have Android up its sleeve it would be in a much worse situation then it is now.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-mone...

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You know what's worse for Google than "antagonizing" Apple?

Being at complete mercy of Apple.

Google has Android, which has a bigger market share than iOS. If Apple kicks out all Google's services from iOS, Google still has Android.

If Google didn't have Android and Apple kicked them out of iOS, they would have nothing.

This is a long term game for both players. Google's strategic plan is to advance Android. Apple's strategic plan is to advance iOS and don't be dependent of Google, which is why they are kicking out Google's maps and invest in their own solution, even though I'm certain it's way more costly for them to do it compared to licensing Google's service.

Both Google and Apple act perfectly reasonably given their long-term strategy.

Apple have always been very clear that they don't like being beholden to anyone when it comes to core products.

Google ran the risk of finding themselves in precisely that position with the advent of mobile devices.

As much as I'd rather Apple and Google - two of the most exciting companies out there - were getting on, I don't think anything Google is doing is that different to what Apple would do were the situation reversed.

Google is also stabbed on its back by Android OEMs and carriers for replacing many Google services with 3rd-party alternatives. This is especially true in China (2nd largest market for Apple) where almost all Google apps have been replaced/eliminated by local Android brands due to censorship and blocking.

Economically the whole Android strategy doesn't make any sense to Google. From a user's perspective it would be much better if Google provides the backend service coupled with Apple's portable devices. Now we end up in this frustrating market with two options: 1) good services + mediocre devices, and 2) mediocre services + good devices.

Google has two big clear goals with their Android strategy:

(1) keep it's main product (Search) from being locked out (by MS/Apple/Facebook), set aside (made nondefault) or emasculated (ad blockers eventually). This is the main point of Chrome as well as G+ to some extent.

(2) minimize frictions that reduce searches. In the case of Android they give away the OS because if the OS costs more the phone costs more and fewer people switch to an internet phone. For Chrome the push for speed attacks the problem at a different angle - faster internet = happier customer = more searches per person.

There are other benefits and goals Google has with this -- yes they want to boost G+, yes they want to keep the data flowing and building, yes they have grand plans down the road -- but those are all secondary.

Android is a long play - keeping the mobile space open is far more important than short term revenue from Apple that could disappear at the whim of Apple, and which likely would have disappeared or diminished soon enough anyway if Apple was in an even more powerful position.

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