Google: 250m Android devices, 700,000 activations per day, 11b Market downloads

What evidence is there to suggest that the search bar on the Android launcher isn’t included in that figure? The search bar in Android goes directly to Google in the browser, with the contents of the search query in the URL, in the exact same way as iOS’ Safari and its toolbar search.

The 97% to 98% of mobile search that they own does mean that they have a monopoly in search for mobile devices.

The refutable fact here however is whether Google is making more ad revenue money on the iPhone than it is from Android. If Google does garner two thirds of its mobile paid advertising revenue from iOS devices, then it is likely (although not definite) that Google could be making more gross profit from the iPhone than Android (this is especially likely when factoring in the development costs of Android). This doesn’t factor Google’s revenue from AdMob, however there aren’t published statistics that show the number of impressions shown to Android and iPhone devices separately.

Google are clearly producing Android for the long haul. While iOS is being produced purely for the purposes of profit, Google are producing Android in order to attain the highest mobile marketshare to push its search products, unfortunately at the expense of user experience.

Actually Apple has a history of being loyal to their partners. In most cases, their partners turn traitor on them. Look how long Apple stuck with Motorola on CPU’s even when they failed to deliver. Despite the music industry resenting Apple for capitalizing in their failure to fight piracy via torrents, Apple is still the only player to seek the blessings of the major labels before proceeding with a cloud music solution.

The problem is basic economics. Everybody expects to be cheated and so they refuse to trust their partners with their future. Its very hard to put all your eggs in somebody else’s basket and trust that they are going to do the right thing. I believe Jobs had every intent on using Google for all search and in-app advertising before the fall out. I also believe that Siri would have been developed with Google had they stayed partners. But when it came to partners Jobs had a very personal perspective on what others viewed as “business relationships”.

Problem is, how can you possibly trust the future of a multi billion dollar company like Google to another company. Google had but one choice, they had to go it alone and make Android into the vehicle to get them there. Problem is that so far Google has made very little money off Android. Counting the acquisition of unprofitable Motorola, Google won’t break even on Android for 8 to 10 years (assuming they don’t make another major investment). If not for their monopoly in Internet search and massive profits from that, Android would have died from lack of funding.

Google had made a huge bet on Android. These huge numbers boost confidence, but do not a profit make. The nice thing for Google is that they can easily afford the bet they have made and ultimately their bet is helping the consumer by providing alternatives. Still, a continued Apple/Google partnership might have meant some other nice innovations would have come to pass in the time these companies spent fighting each other.

Isn’t that how Bing makes its money?

They’re also injecting aids into our chicken nuggets! It’s a metaphor!