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Selling Secrets of Phone Users to Advertisers

nytimes.com

31 pointsdanso25 comments

“We’re observing your behaviors and connecting your profile to mobile devices,” said Eric Rosenblum, chief operating officer at Drawbridge. But don’t call it tracking. “Tracking is a dirty word,” he said.

If you don't want to call it "tracking", I suppose "observing your behaviors" could also be called "spying".

I think the word you're looking for is "stalking".

It's a shame that they don't mention that the purpose of Android is to safeguard Google's access to this information.

Uh, no it's not. I'm not even sure where people get this stuff.

The purpose of android was twofold, AFAIK

1. Andy thought the mobile experience of most users was a lot shittier than it needed to be. While the sidekick was a success, Google was able to provide a vastly larger amount of resources to bear on the problem than his startup could (and well, his startup was running out of money :P). The main goal of android, believe it or not, was to fix this shitty experience.

2. Also, one of the strategies was to keep the carrier's walled garden app models that were becoming popular (this was before apple) from eating Google alive by demanding cuts of ad/other revenue from Google's inevitable mobile apps. Actually, back in these days, the most worrying people on these fronts were the carriers, not Nokia/BlackBerry/whoever. Android and the iPhone essentially commoditized carriers. Before, they essentially controlled what apps got to run on their network. Now they fight it out to be "the best iphone experience".

Nobody was sitting around thinking about how they were going to get and use personal info from phones into ads.

After so many years of betrayal, lies, manipulation and even downright illegal activities, it should be pretty obvious what the goal of anything Google does is: get to know as much private information as possible, by any means possible, and monetize it.

I could understand the confusion a up to a few years ago, but hell, these days they're barely hiding it anymore.

You're not sure where people get this stuff?

Maybe because when someone uses every tool they build to hit people over the head, at some point the logical conclusion may be that hitting people over the head is the goal of developing those tools, regardless of what the PR says?

This comment was so shrill ("betrayal"?) that I wanted to see if it was representative of the user in general. And what I found was that on almost every page of their comment history there are similarly venomous anti-Google comments.

I guess if a blogger like John Gruber can inspire totally random two-minute-hates on HN, I shouldn't be at all surprised that Google can too.

It's interesting that you object more to the term "betrayal" than for instance "illegal activities".

I was referring to the multiple occasions when Google stated "we stand with you on X" and then did a 180 (for instance on net neutrality), if you can think of a more appropriate and less "shrill" term than betrayal, please enlighten me. English is not my first language.

Anyway, is it really so surprising that I loathe a corporation that is engaged in the systematic international violation of civil rights, but thanks to great PR is still worshiped as force for good?

As for my comment history, yeah, perhaps I should be a little less trigger happy when it comes to Google.

It's not so much that you're hating on Google (it's a message board, who cares?) so much as that the specific vector of your distaste for Google was so orthogonal to what 'DannyBee was talking about.

> Nobody was sitting around thinking about how they were going to get and use personal info from phones into ads.

And how do you know this? Google is one of the smartest and richest technology companies out there. Is it inconceivable that they could foresee and plan 5-10 years into the future?

Oh, that's easy: I was there. I was in meetings about strategy now and then. I certainly don't claim to know everything (I worked outside android team but helped it. I received the same awards/etc the team got), but I know enough.

Now, you can certainly choose not to believe me. But I can state for sure the main intent of the people building and running android was to build a great mobile experience for users. When I say "nobody was thinking about ads". I don't mean "nobody considered the possibilities". I mean: Nobody saw it as a goal. It was not driving the decision making process. In fact, some people saw it as an anti-goal.

I don't think you are contradicting the original point.

Nobody is saying that the android team sat around in a smoke filled room plotting about how it could be all about ads. Once Android was at Google, obviously most people would be focused on making a successful platform first and foremost.

Nevertheless, the reason for Google as a whole to own such a platform is to protect its revenues streams.

Google's revenue streams rely on access to data about user behavior.

Android's strategic purpose was to ensure that Google controlled the platform so that the separate goal of capturing user information would not be threatened by other corporations.

I am in fact, contradicting it.

"Android's strategic purpose was to ensure that Google controlled the platform so that the separate goal of capturing user information would not be threatened by other corporations."

False. I have explained the strategic purpose of android. I have explained what the main concerns were. User information capture was not among them. You have restated that you believe it was something else. That's fine. You are entitled to your opinion. Every piece of evidence I have and know about says you are incorrect.

You said: "one of the strategies was to keep the carrier's walled garden app models that were becoming popular (this was before apple) from eating Google alive by demanding cuts of ad/other revenue from Google's inevitable mobile apps."

Google's ad business relies on access to user data for targeting. If Google has a strategic goal to protect the ad business, it therefore also has a strategic goal to protect it's access to user data.

Not sure I understand your #2 point, Google basically gives most of its share of app sales to carriers (70% developers/25% carriers/5% Google) and also an undisclosed share of all mobile ad revenue.

Edit: as to your point about Google wanting to fix the bad experience in mobile, that doesn't contradict the idea that they wanted to monetize the platform, 96% (2011) of all of Google's revenue came from advertising. You'd have to be delusional to imagine that has no impact on their decision making and strategies.

I can state without a doubt in my mind that the original purpose was not to monetize the platform. If it happened to be possible, sure, great. But Google would absolutely have considered Android a rousing success even if it had not been possible.

I hope i'm not really that delusional, considering I was involved in the decision making and strategies so that I could ensure they could be defended legally.

None of what i've said is actually even confidential. Andy Rubin has stated the same things in interviews over the years. I guess people just assumed he was selling them a line?

I'm sure you're right about the motivations of many of the people within Google being essentially, 'to build a better platform'.

I don't believe the idea that this was an entirely altruistic goal.

I don't think what you are saying contradicts the overall idea that the underlying reason for Google to invest in Android was to protect it's access to data about users against other corporations.

I.e. Many people at Google were motivated to create a good platform. But the reason for creating a platform at all was fundamentally to make sure that it was Google's good platform. The fact that Google requires access data about customer behavior for it's business model can't just be washed away by pointing at the motivations of the people tasked with making Android successful - a lower level goal.

"I don't think what you are saying contradicts the overall idea that the underlying reason for Google to invest in Android was to protect it's access to data about users against other corporations."

It does. You keep trying to twist what i'm saying into some kind of complementary statement. It isn't. All evidence I have and know about tells me Google did not invest in Android to protect its ability to gather user information. Full stop.

It sounds like you don't believe this. That's fine. It does not change what I am saying :)

I believe that Google's ad business relies on targeting based on user behavior. If Android was intended to protect the ad business, it follows that it must also protect access to the user data the ad business needs in order to be competitive.

1. No, it really doesn't. This is entirely faulty logic. Ads relies on many things. The fact that something may have been strategically useful to protect one of those things does not imply it was strategically useful or had the goal of protect all of those things.

2. I'm not sure what part of "Android was meant to solve the shitty user experience on mobile" part you missed. Does it not occur to you that one of the main strategic goals was instead to prevent a shitty mobile experience from eating away at ad revenue from mobile apps? What does this have to do with tracking user behavior.

I have also already explained, multiple times now, the goal behind android. You have repeatedly cut off parts of sentences (for example, where i talk about others eating ad revenue from mobile apps, rather than "ads in general") to try to make a point.

I've also stated multiple times your actual theory is false. It was explicitly a non-goal to care about tracking user-behavior. I don't know how much more clearly I could say it than that.

I'm honestly a bit tired of arguing. As I said, you are welcome to believe whatever theory you like. It does not, however, change either history, or the facts.

> Google basically gives most of its share of app sales to carriers (70% developers/25% carriers/5% Google) and also an undisclosed share of all mobile ad revenue.

Any source for that claim?

It's rare to get a definitive confirmation from Google or its partners, but the revenue split was reportedly one of the early concessions Google made to bring carriers into the Open Handset Alliance.

This article talks about the current revenue sharing scheme and how Google is trying to re-negotiate a bigger cut of the 30% transaction fee on app sales:

"70% of every sale goes to the developer, 25% goes to the carrier, and 5% goes to Google. The new deal would cut the carrier’s share to 15%, which is what Google would also get."

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-share-play-store-andr...

This one has a statement from Google about how they share mobile ad revenue from searches with carriers but qualifies that the revenue sharing doesn't include apps like Youtube and Maps (interestingly it doesn't mention whether that's the case with mobile advertising on 3rd party apps):

"Google (NSDQ: GOOG) provided a statement today, saying that it is sharing advertising revenues with carrier and handset partners, but clarified that it is limited to search and does not extend to other applications, like YouTube or Maps. They said it was a pretty standard deal, and works across all Android devices that have Google search."

http://paidcontent.org/2010/03/26/419-androids-secret-sauce-...

From the Q1 2012 analyst call, Nikesh Arora talking about OEMs and Carriers get revenue share from Google Play and Google Search:

"Yes. I mean, again, I’m not going to talk about specific of the TAC on mobile. But as you know, we get people using our devices both organically as well as through our distribution partnerships with carriers and OEMs. And typically, the OEMs and carriers participate in some of the economics that are on the Android marketplace or Google Play and some of them participate in the economics around Google Search just the way we would do syndication on the Web platform, which you do with many partners around the world. We have similar deals on the mobile front."

- Nikesh Arora, senior vice president and chief business officer at Google

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/13/android-economics-an-introd...

Thanks :)

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/search-googles-castle-moat/

Android's purpose was to make sure Apple didn't get a mobile monopoly, and then freeze Google out of the Mobile search biz.

You comment is a bit unclear - you may well have meant this yourself.

Google makes money from ads, and the y have products that are designed to help them do so. Let me know when I should start being alarmed.

People will slowly realize it once Google starts monetizing it more. Ads in Gmail are the start.

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