On Jan 8, 4:33 pm, Moandji Ezana <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Google isn’t a web application company—they’re an advertising company"
>
> I hear this said a lot, but does it really make sense beyond being a catchy
> phrase?

That means that nearly all revenue comes from advertising - 95% in
Q3/2010 (http://www.kikabink.com/news/google-95-percent-of-revenues-
come-from-advertising/).  So this is Google's core business, and
increasing advertising revenue is therefore Google's most important
point.  Apple makes most of its revenue from selling mobile devices,
so it worries about how to make them more attractive; Microsoft gets
110% of its profit from Windows, Office and Visual Studio (its online
business and sometimes the Xbox lose about 10% of this profit).

> "If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money
> from their applications? Advertising."
>
> I don't really get why Android users would remain so unwilling to buy apps.

Until late 2010 (fall?), you could only buy apps from the Android app
store in few countries (9? 13?), and you could also sell from just a
few.  So all the developers from the "left-out countries" flooded the
market with free apps - and probably a lot of them with ads.  Now you
can buy from the Android app store in most countries where you can buy
Android handsets, but the free app model seems to have stuck. A dude
from the Angry Birds developer said "paid content just doesn’t work on
Android" recently - Angry Birds is sold on iOS but free on Android
(http://technmarketing.com/iphone/peter-vesterbacka-maker-of-angry-
birds-talks-about-the-birds-apple-android-nokia-and-palmhp).

BTW: He also had an interesting take on Android fragmentation:

"Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a
developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they
know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing,
but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device
fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the
ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The
carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open,
a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on
Android."

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