4 ms·

Apple is About to Reduce Google's Revenues

31 points by rblion 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
andybak 14y ago
At one point he states: "Google charges Apple for having Maps loaded onto that Apple hardware. And as I’ve noted before, this is a substantial sum: rather more than Google currently makes from Android for example." but the quote he uses (his own) to support this actually combines search and maps with no indication of the proportion of revenue between the two products: "The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period." [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/09/apple-is-about-to-reduce-googles-revenues/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/09/apple-is-... ] Also - This calculation was debunked shortly after it was published: http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times-more-off-the-iphone-vs-android-9017 http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times-mo...
- jyap 14y ago
  To be fair, this is just some random writer at Forbes who doesn't really know what he's talking about to write a totally informed 'article' and is basing his 'article' on some quotes he found and his view of joining the dots. The dots being pretty obvious as least to the Hacker News crowd. So yes, agreed, his connecting of dots come across poorly but it didn't stop him from gathering 38k views.
  - clinth 14y ago
    Agreed. And splitting hairs here, but he's a Forbes contributor, not a writer there. Forbes is using its magazine's name to make its federated/outsourced blog system sound more credible. forbes.com has a lot of blogspam.
    - smcnally 14y ago
      What are examples of what you consider blogspam on forbes.com?
      - someperson 14y ago
        Here's one (but by no means the only) example: http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-article-and-got-all-the-traffic-2012-02/ http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-art... From what I've seen, articles on forbes.com are mostly low-quality - often blogspam or tabloid-style journalism. They seem to have a good reputation in society which isn't represented by their articles. I would be a happier living in a filter bubble with "forbes.com" removed from my life.
        TrevorJ 14y ago
        I noticed that the other day, with the submission comparing Facebook to Enron. I was suprised how poorly thought out the article was, coming from a name like Forbes.
        smcnally 14y ago
        I'm not saying there are no examples. In the one you bring up, though, I recall the piece and ensuing hullaballoo: The original NYT author, Charles Duhigg, basically admired and defended the Forbes writer's job (re taking the story in a different direction; providing more exposure to an audience outside his own; providing a prominent book plug), and then O'Neill backed off his own "link-baity" headline. http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/21/nyt-reporter-defends-forbes-writer-accused-of-stealing-his-work/ http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/21/nyt-reporter-defends-forb... In general (though, agreed, ~off-topic here), more can be done w/r/t quality assurance of a distributed content network. Something like "report blogspam" is highly subjective and rife with abuse potential. Slashdot's moderation / meta moderation, in combination with straight up and down votes by the wider community, can be effective. Relying on a "central editorial functions" to handle it all is inefficient and doesn't scale well. This - reputation, rewards, quality (of writers, content, community) - has been an area of interest for me for years. I'm actively working on same currently. I'll put an Ask HN together and see if it gets any traction. (Disclaimer: I work at Forbes and speak here only for myself)
- mtgx 14y ago
  I remember there was a lot of misunderstanding about Google's revenues from Android when everyone started writing articles about it a few months ago. Most of their "facts" came from 2010, when Google still had like 4% of the US market, and Apple had like 20-23%. And somehow they extrapolated that to mean that Google also makes 4x less from Android right now. But Google has grown much faster than Apple since then, and by now Google has caught up even with the total amount of iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), and they both have around 350 million devices on the market. So it's very unlikely that Google is still making much less from Android than they do from iOS. There's another similar kind of misunderstanding whenever Apple releases the "money they have paid to developers". First they forget that Apple only ever mentions the total amount they have paid since the App Store was created in 2008. They also forget that again, Apple had a huge headstart in both number of apps and in number of units in the market until late 2010 or so, and that only more recently they've had about the same amount of apps and number of units in the market as Apple. So when you compare the "total amount" Apple has paid to devs to Google's "total amount" that they paid to devs, obviously Apple will come out on top because of their huge headstart in the first 2-3 years. But if you compare the last quarter or last year for both, which is a lot more relevant for devs, because they'd want to know how much they can make right now, Apple might still come out on top, but the difference should be a lot smaller, and definitely not something like $3 billion vs $100 million. Hopefully the "Apple media" will remember this before they start slamming Google when Apple will release their new numbers, without really understanding the context of those numbers.
  - clarky07 14y ago
    While you make good points, iOS apps currently make significantly more than android apps. My guess would be at least 2-1 if not more.
  - huxley 14y ago
    You're misremembering things, Google had already passed Apple in US marketshare in 2010: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/business/la-fi-google-apple-20100512 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/business/la-fi-googl... In the US, Google accounted for 28% of smartphones versus Apple's 21%. Apple opened its App Store in July 10, 2008. Google opened up its Android Market in 22 October 2008. If you follow Apple's conference calls, you'd realize that Apple gives frequent updates of the amount being paid out to developers. In the last quarter, Apple paid developers approx. $500 million. So far as I can see, Google doesn't release figures for what they pay Android developers in either app or ad revenues. If Google was to be more transparent with their revenues and how much Android developers receive, then there could be a genuine accounting for how each platform is doing, but ironically in these instances Apple is far more open than Google.
sgt101 14y ago
The thing is, replicating Google search in terms of quality is very hard now (it is really, really clever) but 99% of users simply won't notice the difference between the awesomeness of Google and the pretty goodness of anything else. So - the question is : why don't Apple do this?
- vladd 14y ago
  It's a dangerous line of thought (there's a saying, "people who forget history are doomed to repeat it"): it is this awesomeness that allowed Google back in 2000 to overthrow the market incumbents at that time, Altavista, Hotbot and so on. Don't underestimate the power of "awesomeness", in search at least a significant number of users are ready to jump ship whenever something better and with less junk appears.
  - fear91 14y ago
    I agree - many people are waiting for Google's replacement. People were laughing at Bing's quality, but it is really on par with Google right now. It's just that people are habituated to use Google's search. You can test this with this tool: http://blekko.com/ws/+/monte http://blekko.com/ws/+/monte Truth to be told, Google search results are worse than few years ago. At the same time, they look more and more like a christmas tree - ads and other junk (google products?, google plus results?) everywhere.
    - ditoa 14y ago
      I still find Google to have much better results than Bing for complicated search, such as a brain dump of a few things about the subject such as a person or film rather than a more structured search.
    - faulty 14y ago
      I don't trust the results of that website. Compare: http://blekko.com/ws/c%23+get+custom+attribute+/monte http://blekko.com/ws/c%23+get+custom+attribute+/monte With: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=c%23+get+custom+attribute http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=c%23+get+custom+attribute Blekko claims the first google result is "C: Summary for Citigroup, Inc. Common Stock- Yahoo! Finance", while google finds the relevant information.
pan69 14y ago
How much is Apple's market share these days? I thought Android was still the major platform and I didn't think Google would be lying awake at night from this.
- shangrila 14y ago
  http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/27/apple-reclaims-no-1-smartphone-spot-in-q4/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/27/apple-reclaims-no-1-smartphone...
  - rplnt 14y ago
    They used the word global but I had a suspicion the numbers are from NA (or even USA) only. When I searched for their source I found a report claiming to be global that has very different figures for vendor shares. Apple with a 5.2% market share. I know it doesn't translate directly into 5.2% iOS share but it definitely won't be on part with Android as the article reported.
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      The figures are correct, Apple was briefly the biggest manufacturer of smartphones, in between Nokia and Samsung having that title. 5% is more likely their share of all mobile phones, including non-smartphones. But if were talking Googles income then the Android vs iOS stats are more relevant qhich are more like 60 vs 20%
- jyap 14y ago
  "Market share" is a very vague term. Nonetheless, iOS beats out Android in web browser usage which is why Google derives much more ad dollars from iOS compared to Android. That is the important metric. "Market share" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate to something else that is valued in smart phone terms such as browser usage, paid app installs, app usage, advertising dollars generated. Google does care. Which is why they brought up their Google Maps announcements early last week.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ravivyas 14y ago
How much does Google earn from Maps anyway? Remember it was free till last year.
- taligent 14y ago
  Google advertises in Maps. So even though it is free they are still making money.
  - magicalist 14y ago
    You guys are conflating two things. Google starting charging for the Maps API last year. They don't currently run any ads on the Maps API. Apple does not use the Javascript Maps API for their current iOS maps.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ifureadthisumad 14y ago
google is starting to lose people's trust and now revenues from partners. not looking good for google...
- dansul 14y ago
  > google is starting to lose people's trust What indications tell you that Google is loosing people's trust, besides your own ?
  - fear91 14y ago
    Google is the next Microsoft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BslAhJ5-C9g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BslAhJ5-C9g
visa 14y ago
Guys checkout how much Apple is paying to it employees http://www.visasquare.com/visa-greencard/salary/apple-inc-206108.html http://www.visasquare.com/visa-greencard/salary/apple-inc-20...

31 points by rblion 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

At one point he states: "Google charges Apple for having Maps loaded onto that Apple hardware. And as I’ve noted before, this is a substantial sum: rather more than Google currently makes from Android for example." but the quote he uses (his own) to support this actually combines search and maps with no indication of the proportion of revenue between the two products: "The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period." [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/09/apple-is-about-to-reduce-googles-revenues/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/09/apple-is-... ] Also - This calculation was debunked shortly after it was published: http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times-more-off-the-iphone-vs-android-9017 http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times-mo...

jyap 14y ago
To be fair, this is just some random writer at Forbes who doesn't really know what he's talking about to write a totally informed 'article' and is basing his 'article' on some quotes he found and his view of joining the dots. The dots being pretty obvious as least to the Hacker News crowd. So yes, agreed, his connecting of dots come across poorly but it didn't stop him from gathering 38k views.
- clinth 14y ago
  Agreed. And splitting hairs here, but he's a Forbes contributor, not a writer there. Forbes is using its magazine's name to make its federated/outsourced blog system sound more credible. forbes.com has a lot of blogspam.
  - smcnally 14y ago
    What are examples of what you consider blogspam on forbes.com?
    - someperson 14y ago
      Here's one (but by no means the only) example: http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-article-and-got-all-the-traffic-2012-02/ http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-art... From what I've seen, articles on forbes.com are mostly low-quality - often blogspam or tabloid-style journalism. They seem to have a good reputation in society which isn't represented by their articles. I would be a happier living in a filter bubble with "forbes.com" removed from my life.
      - TrevorJ 14y ago
        I noticed that the other day, with the submission comparing Facebook to Enron. I was suprised how poorly thought out the article was, coming from a name like Forbes.
      - smcnally 14y ago
        I'm not saying there are no examples. In the one you bring up, though, I recall the piece and ensuing hullaballoo: The original NYT author, Charles Duhigg, basically admired and defended the Forbes writer's job (re taking the story in a different direction; providing more exposure to an audience outside his own; providing a prominent book plug), and then O'Neill backed off his own "link-baity" headline. http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/21/nyt-reporter-defends-forbes-writer-accused-of-stealing-his-work/ http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/21/nyt-reporter-defends-forb... In general (though, agreed, ~off-topic here), more can be done w/r/t quality assurance of a distributed content network. Something like "report blogspam" is highly subjective and rife with abuse potential. Slashdot's moderation / meta moderation, in combination with straight up and down votes by the wider community, can be effective. Relying on a "central editorial functions" to handle it all is inefficient and doesn't scale well. This - reputation, rewards, quality (of writers, content, community) - has been an area of interest for me for years. I'm actively working on same currently. I'll put an Ask HN together and see if it gets any traction. (Disclaimer: I work at Forbes and speak here only for myself)
mtgx 14y ago
I remember there was a lot of misunderstanding about Google's revenues from Android when everyone started writing articles about it a few months ago. Most of their "facts" came from 2010, when Google still had like 4% of the US market, and Apple had like 20-23%. And somehow they extrapolated that to mean that Google also makes 4x less from Android right now. But Google has grown much faster than Apple since then, and by now Google has caught up even with the total amount of iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), and they both have around 350 million devices on the market. So it's very unlikely that Google is still making much less from Android than they do from iOS. There's another similar kind of misunderstanding whenever Apple releases the "money they have paid to developers". First they forget that Apple only ever mentions the total amount they have paid since the App Store was created in 2008. They also forget that again, Apple had a huge headstart in both number of apps and in number of units in the market until late 2010 or so, and that only more recently they've had about the same amount of apps and number of units in the market as Apple. So when you compare the "total amount" Apple has paid to devs to Google's "total amount" that they paid to devs, obviously Apple will come out on top because of their huge headstart in the first 2-3 years. But if you compare the last quarter or last year for both, which is a lot more relevant for devs, because they'd want to know how much they can make right now, Apple might still come out on top, but the difference should be a lot smaller, and definitely not something like $3 billion vs $100 million. Hopefully the "Apple media" will remember this before they start slamming Google when Apple will release their new numbers, without really understanding the context of those numbers.
- clarky07 14y ago
  While you make good points, iOS apps currently make significantly more than android apps. My guess would be at least 2-1 if not more.
- huxley 14y ago
  You're misremembering things, Google had already passed Apple in US marketshare in 2010: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/business/la-fi-google-apple-20100512 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/business/la-fi-googl... In the US, Google accounted for 28% of smartphones versus Apple's 21%. Apple opened its App Store in July 10, 2008. Google opened up its Android Market in 22 October 2008. If you follow Apple's conference calls, you'd realize that Apple gives frequent updates of the amount being paid out to developers. In the last quarter, Apple paid developers approx. $500 million. So far as I can see, Google doesn't release figures for what they pay Android developers in either app or ad revenues. If Google was to be more transparent with their revenues and how much Android developers receive, then there could be a genuine accounting for how each platform is doing, but ironically in these instances Apple is far more open than Google.

sgt101 14y ago

The thing is, replicating Google search in terms of quality is very hard now (it is really, really clever) but 99% of users simply won't notice the difference between the awesomeness of Google and the pretty goodness of anything else. So - the question is : why don't Apple do this?

vladd 14y ago
It's a dangerous line of thought (there's a saying, "people who forget history are doomed to repeat it"): it is this awesomeness that allowed Google back in 2000 to overthrow the market incumbents at that time, Altavista, Hotbot and so on. Don't underestimate the power of "awesomeness", in search at least a significant number of users are ready to jump ship whenever something better and with less junk appears.
- fear91 14y ago
  I agree - many people are waiting for Google's replacement. People were laughing at Bing's quality, but it is really on par with Google right now. It's just that people are habituated to use Google's search. You can test this with this tool: http://blekko.com/ws/+/monte http://blekko.com/ws/+/monte Truth to be told, Google search results are worse than few years ago. At the same time, they look more and more like a christmas tree - ads and other junk (google products?, google plus results?) everywhere.
  - ditoa 14y ago
    I still find Google to have much better results than Bing for complicated search, such as a brain dump of a few things about the subject such as a person or film rather than a more structured search.
  - faulty 14y ago
    I don't trust the results of that website. Compare: http://blekko.com/ws/c%23+get+custom+attribute+/monte http://blekko.com/ws/c%23+get+custom+attribute+/monte With: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=c%23+get+custom+attribute http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=c%23+get+custom+attribute Blekko claims the first google result is "C: Summary for Citigroup, Inc. Common Stock- Yahoo! Finance", while google finds the relevant information.

pan69 14y ago

How much is Apple's market share these days? I thought Android was still the major platform and I didn't think Google would be lying awake at night from this.

shangrila 14y ago
http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/27/apple-reclaims-no-1-smartphone-spot-in-q4/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/27/apple-reclaims-no-1-smartphone...
- rplnt 14y ago
  They used the word global but I had a suspicion the numbers are from NA (or even USA) only. When I searched for their source I found a report claiming to be global that has very different figures for vendor shares. Apple with a 5.2% market share. I know it doesn't translate directly into 5.2% iOS share but it definitely won't be on part with Android as the article reported.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    The figures are correct, Apple was briefly the biggest manufacturer of smartphones, in between Nokia and Samsung having that title. 5% is more likely their share of all mobile phones, including non-smartphones. But if were talking Googles income then the Android vs iOS stats are more relevant qhich are more like 60 vs 20%
jyap 14y ago
"Market share" is a very vague term. Nonetheless, iOS beats out Android in web browser usage which is why Google derives much more ad dollars from iOS compared to Android. That is the important metric. "Market share" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate to something else that is valued in smart phone terms such as browser usage, paid app installs, app usage, advertising dollars generated. Google does care. Which is why they brought up their Google Maps announcements early last week.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

ravivyas 14y ago

How much does Google earn from Maps anyway? Remember it was free till last year.

taligent 14y ago
Google advertises in Maps. So even though it is free they are still making money.
- magicalist 14y ago
  You guys are conflating two things. Google starting charging for the Maps API last year. They don't currently run any ads on the Maps API. Apple does not use the Javascript Maps API for their current iOS maps.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

ifureadthisumad 14y ago

google is starting to lose people's trust and now revenues from partners. not looking good for google...

dansul 14y ago
> google is starting to lose people's trust What indications tell you that Google is loosing people's trust, besides your own ?
- fear91 14y ago
  Google is the next Microsoft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BslAhJ5-C9g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BslAhJ5-C9g

visa 14y ago

Guys checkout how much Apple is paying to it employees http://www.visasquare.com/visa-greencard/salary/apple-inc-206108.html http://www.visasquare.com/visa-greencard/salary/apple-inc-20...