5 ms·
I wish I could take credit for this observation. But Ben Thompson summed it up best in the Dithering podcast this morning. An ad company is incapable of selli
by scarface74 4y ago
I wish I could take credit for this observation. But Ben Thompson summed it up best in the Dithering podcast this morning. An ad company is incapable of selling things to consumers. The entire organization is built around giving things to people for free and selling ads. Everything else that Google has done has been a failure.
Microsoft and Apple have decades of experience with selling stuff to people.
- Larrikin 4y agoThis completely falls apart when you look at Android.
- scarface74 4y agoNot really. Depending on the estimates you believe, Google is only selling 800K to 1.2 Million Pixels a quarter https://9to5google.com/2022/05/19/pixel-6-us-market-q1-2022/ https://9to5google.com/2022/05/19/pixel-6-us-market-q1-2022/ That’s about the number of phones Apple sells in a couple of days in a down quarter. Also Google isn’t “selling” Android. It’s giving the operating system away to support advertising. Microsoft sold billions of dollars worth of Windows and DOS licenses over the years. It never had to give them away to get uptake.
- hbrn 4y agoUnlike Stadia, Android was acquired.
- hbn 4y agoEh, they acquired it when it was going to be an OS for digital cameras, and had no uptake. The point doesn't really stand here. The better point in favor of the "Google can't sell anything" argument is that they don't really sell Android to end users. The OEMs do all the selling, and they just get taken along for the ride while they offer a platform where they also sell ads and gather user data to target ads better. The devices they actually sell (Nexus, Pixel) have never really had that much success outside of enthusiast communities.