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Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 :)

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