Embarrassing, Apple Is Responsible For The Vast Majority Of Google’s Mobile Revenue

Image via CrunchBase

There are new revelations about the health of Google’s mobile business and it looks like Google is in really bad shape. Thanks to documents submitted in the legal battle between Google and Oracle over patents, the public gets a new look at exactly how well Google’s Android is performing.

Google is secretive about letting the public know about how much revenue Android brings in – but now we know that Android actually doesn’t make much money for Google at all. Google’s overall 2011 revenues totaled about $40 billion and much of that is from ads from search results on desktop computers. Very little of Google’s overall revenues is from mobile.

According to The Guardian, Android generated less than $550 million between 2008 and 2011 – pitiful. Google produces the Android software which it then gives away for free to handset makers to sell. Google makes its money from ad revenue on the mobile devices and from applications on Google Play (formerly known as Android Market), which is doing extremely poorly compared to Apple’s App store.

Here is where it gets particularly interesting – Google actually makes more money from Apple’s mobile devices than it does from its own Android powered smartphones! Now isn’t that hilarious, ha-ha, especially considering the recent bad blood between Google and Apple.

Apple is responsible for generating more than four times as much revenue for Google! This is because at least half of all smartphone owners use an Apple device and Google is the default search engine. Apple also extensively used Google Maps – but as recently told Google to get lost and is now using a mixture of its own acquired mapping technology and free crowdsourced mapping.

Who knew that Apple had such a big role in Google’s mobile business?

Majority of Google’s mobile traffic can be credited to Apple. Google should be grateful to Apple for being so helpful, but Google treats Apple like crap. Google expressed its gratitude to Apple by trying to impose itself into Apple’s territory, which infuriated Apple.

What did Apple do as payback?

Apple no longer extensively uses Google Maps, Apple added other search engines as alternative options to Google’s, and Apple appears to be ditching Google altogether in China (a huge and attractive market). And we all know about how Apple set its Safari Web browser default to automatically block third-party tracking cookies  – however, it was exposed last month that Google illegally circumvented this security feature, but is now facing countless lawsuits from Apple users.

Psst…hey Google…don’t bite that hand that feeds you.

For more information:

The Guardian, “Google’s Android has generated just $550m since 2008, figures suggest” – click here

AppleInsider, “Google earns 80% of its mobile revenue from iOS, just 20% from Android” – click here

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Google Is Quickly Becoming Useless

 Hey folks,

I came across a fantastic article, by Keith Woolcock of Time Magazine, which describes how Google is fading away as business. The article raises many superb points about Google’s weak business model and how companies like Facebook are changing the way the Internet works.

I have written about this here in earlier posts myself, where I described how Facebook is essentially a walled garden that is closing off its private data about its users from Google’s robotic Internet crawlers. If Google cannot access Facebook’s data, then Google becomes useless.

I highly recommend you read the article for yourself, click here

Google Shares Have Plummeted Like Never Before

Recently, Google lost big in earning and stock price. Shares of the company plummeted significantly and this is extremely rare for a company like Google. It has everybody worried and scratching their heads as to what wrong. The future of the company is a huge question mark right now as analysts do not know exactly what to make of Google.

Some think that this is a disastrous trend and have sold off their shares of the company so that they can save themselves from a slowly sinking ship.

You can read about 8 arguments to avoid Google here

CNBC article that explains the recent revenue and stock problems of Google, click here

Analysts spilt on Google’s future, click here to learn more