I fail to see how divesting Adsense would work. It's either going to kill off Adsense completely since it would no longer have access to pervasive Google tracking information, or if there's a deal to keep sharing that information, it would still open Google to anti-trust litigation.
The problem is losing customers, I'm guessing that most people buying Adsense ads are also buying Adwords ads. Carve off the Adsense side and it would just collapse.
The advertiser base for Adsense is people buying search Ads. Some percentage of the advertisers just left defaults on and don’t know they are buying Adsense Ads (now conveniently called Google Ads.)
I could see how this idea would come from someone inside Google. Product doesn’t make them much money and they can claim they made a major change to their business. Because of YouTube, Google has more display inventory to sell now than they can handle. Ironically, the YouTube display inventory is incredibly poor quality, relative to the better Adsense properties out there.
An actual divestment would have to be Google splitting their search engine off from all of their other businesses. Keeping ad sales bundled with Google Search would be reasonable because there wouldn’t be any internal products to promote.
I would also add, breaking the display advertising marketplace would be extremely problematic for third party publishers, and likely guarantee the lock in to Google News, Facebook News, and Apple News for all news sites. Dumping Adsense is very self serving, and could actually amplify Google’s anti-trust issues.
There are several companies competing for ad dollars and using various platforms (search, Instagram, etc) to feed ad systems for revenue. Their systems are extremely targeted and I like the optimized ads for new brands that are finding me.
Additionally, Chinese companies are doing the same and will combine even greater amounts of data — size is extremely valuable in an economic war of east vs west. I choose us.
> Their systems are extremely targeted and I like the optimized ads for new brands that are finding me.
Forgive me, but this sounds entirely like PR-speak used by ad companies to justify the mass stalking they perform. What sort of examples are there that you enjoy, what information did they use to target you, and what made that initial information gathering be justified?
China is the leading bogeyman used to suggest allowing monopolies in the US is a good idea. In short, since China allows their companies to behave badly, we should let ours behave badly too so that we don't fall behind in the market.
Even so, it comes across as a jingoistic diversion in order to paint users and advertisers as being on the same side. "It would be a shame if there were one fewer group stalking you everywhere you go, because then the right people wouldn't be stalking you."
I think the risk is that your targeting information is in the hands of a company that can be mined by the Chinese government to perhaps even identify you. It's also aggregate market/economic information. Should this data be protected or otherwise restricted? Should it be export controlled or not? You can imagine that the "data wars" are coming ... whether that's healthy competition or something else I don't think we know yet or have policy around. I think the EU is further ahead in this space with policies around data privacy for example.
The US could operate similarly but we usually expect a warrant for such access but I think there is a big push in the US govt to expand access as well.
>The US could operate similarly but we usually expect a warrant for such access but I think there is a big push in the US govt to expand access as well.
With PRISM starting data collection from Google more than 10 years ago I think expecting a warrant for this very valuable data is generous.
They could carve out AdSense and rename it Doubleclick.net. Going back to the pre-2008 GOOGL would be quite nice, even if they had to charge for services like Search.
The DoubleClick side of the business still exists: it's called Google AdManager. Very roughly, AdSense is "hey Google, please put ads on my page and make me money" while AdManager is "I'm a big publisher and make deals directly with advertisers for most of the ads I show". AdSense was built internally, DoubleClick was an acquisition.
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
> Going back to the pre-2008 GOOGL would be quite nice, even if they had to charge for services like Search.
1. Pre-2008 GOOG never charged for search
2. Can you think of any general-purpose examples where charging for search has worked? I can think of a few in the specialist space (academic papers, law documents, medical professionals) but nothing in the general-purpose space. That sounds like a recipe for the company's revenue imploding.
Most of Google's revenue comes from AdWords, which is the ads on google.com and from other ads on Google's own properties. AdSense is the ads that you can put on your own web site, powered by Google's advertising technologies. While it's a huge business in its own right, AdSense could definitely be spun off.
I'm trying to find information on what sections of Google/Alphabet make what revenue. How do you know that AdWords in the majority of their advertising revenue?
That's hardly a deep enough cut. Take away Android, or better, Search. Either of those business units can survive on their own. It makes Google far less of a monopoly and breaks up the pervasive spying (at least insofar as it isn't one company tracking everything).
Android (the OS part, the one you want opensourced) is pretty much not making any revenue (which is easy to see on the earnings report).
So what you're basically saying is that government should decree to destroy Android as a product and let Apple take over the whole marked with its completely proprietary and DRM locked OS (which is also not earning any money by itself without the rest of Apple corporation to feed it).
The purpose of Android is to provide some counterweight so that google doesn’t have to pay so much to Apple to be the dominant mobile search engine. It is an economic losss on its own terms but saves Google much more than it costs. They would be foolish to divest it as it is probably not viable as a standalone entity (for reasons others have mentioned)
Actually, it's now a few but rathet a pretty big bunch of very different corporations & many of them direct competitors. And thanks to the kernel project & its license, they can still work together towards the common good.
I'm sure it's a large expense.
However, they make more money from the data and market share they get from it.
Why else would they keep moving things out of AOSP and into their proprietary frameworks?
Same for Linux itself - however in that case, there isn't incentive to make it proprietary, because the companies are either making money from hardware sales or from support contracts.
Yup. Used to be called "Google Experience", even. I don't see how this proprietary part of "Android" or whatever can exist outside Google as a business. And AOSP sans Google Experience is a thing already, as well.
Sure, if the only viable business model for Android is to underhandedly sell people as eyeballs for advertising, perhaps Android should not exist.
If Android weren't free, perhaps we would have more paid alternatives to Apple. The problem with free and open-source software seems to be that you can't have a vibrant market of alternatives, development tends to acrete around 1 or 2 successful projects, with perhaps some satellites sitting at much, much lower market share.
This wouldn't necessarily be problematic, but it becomes so when those core few popular solutions are controlled and monetized by a single huge corporation.
Killing the Free OS does not give me any guarantee that the invasive advertising is not going to show up on future "paid alternatives to Apple".
As it is now, I'd rather have to be vigilant to what I put on my Android phone than having no Android phone and trust the other big companies they will not take the chance of exploiting ex-Android user base.
Of course. But killing the business model of pretending to give away stuff for free when you're actually making money by selling the 'customer's data does guarantee that this business model will not show up again.
Android is not a "business model". It does not need to make money by itself to be justifiable. All Android needs to do for Google is to help them to commoditize their complements*
Killing Android is not going to stop Google from collecting data much like Facebook still collects data from people who install Instagram/FB on their oh-so-pricy iPhones.
If what you really want is to ask for regulation to stop data collection from the companies, be my guest. But advocating the destruction of one of the largest software ecosystems which is (mostly still) based on F/OSS is cutting off the noise to spite the face.
Google's business model is to sell consumers to advertisers as efficiently as possible. Android makes money for Google by achieving that (plus a little extra from the app store). If Google were somehow forced to stop collecting data from Android devices, they would have no reason to continue developing Android (and the same will be true of Fuchsia).
Apple on the other hand makes its money from sales of its hardware and from their 30% cut of the much more profitable App Store. They are likely also collecting data and probably extracting value from that as well, and they are certainly allowing other companies (such as Google and Facebook) to release their data-collecting apps on their platform; but if data collection was entirely prohibited starting tomorrow, Apple would still be selling and developing iOS.
F/OSS is not a good in itself. Technology is technology. A F/OSS data collection program is exactly as bad as a proprietary data collection program - the purpose is much, much more relevant than the development model, in the grand scheme.
So sure, I have nothing against Android itself (I prefer it to iOS personally). But if attacking the data collection model had to cause the end of Android, I would accept that in a heartbeat, and I think most privacy advocates would as well.
> Google's business model is to sell consumers to advertisers as efficiently as possible.
The problem of oversimplifying some concepts is that we end up with absurd statements like this accepted as fact.
> Android makes money for Google by achieving that.
You are confusing tactics with strategy. Android is not a tactic, it is strategy. (Please do read the link I posted before)
> F/OSS is not a good in itself
Yeah, well, that is just, like, your opinion, man. For plenty of people there is a lot of inherit value associated with Software being Libre. The mere fact that I can take a fork of Android, remove the G-Services part that I don't like and install it on a rootable device, while not being able to do the same with iOS, is an concrete example of that.
> A F/OSS data collection program is exactly as bad as a proprietary data collection program.
Your issue here is not with Android, rather with the myriad of other Google Services that come in the OS. I am failing to understand why you keep conflating the two. Are you also going to start asking for Google to stop contributing to the Linux kernel because they use it on Android and their servers?
I did read the article, I know it for a long time. But I do not believe it applies in this case. Google is not selling hardware, it is not selling software, it is not even selling services. Google sells advertising, and mobile phones serve a dual role: they are (1) a platform for advertising, and (2) a means to improve their advertising products by data collection.
The biggest risk for Google is that someone else controls the mobile platform, and chooses not to give them space on this platform, or chooses not to allow them to collect the data that they need to improve their advertising.
Both are the same reasons why Google chose to build Chrome. Browsers were already a commodity, Microsoft and Netscape had seen to that long before Chrome started. So Google's strategy with Chrome can't have been commoditizing their complements. Rather, their strategy is about control of their platform, and it proved very successful. And now they are applying the same strategy with Android and the Google Play services.
And yes, my issue is not with the core open source Android code, my issue is with the final OS on my phone, which includes the Linux kernel, the Android OS, and a lot of Google tracking that I can't scrutinize or disable.
However, if Google were to start losing control of Androideither through laws or through competition (say the Amazon Android phone had taken off and squeezed Google Play out of the market) I can guarantee you that Google investment in Android would slow to a crawl. Google doesn't need a commodity OS on mobile. Google needs to control as much as possible of the mobile phone platform.
I disagree with your first paragraph, especially the conclusion. Case in point: Facebook is still doing just fine at their data collection even though they are (yet) only at the application layer. But I don't want to keep beating this bush.
In the end, all I can say is "if you are so worried about Google's Android, go ahead fight the good fight, get a Fairphone with a custom ROM without g-services, or with any other OS. Asking for Android as a whole to be killed is short-sighted and will not achieve anything"
> Sure, if the only viable business model for Android is to underhandedly sell people as eyeballs for advertising, perhaps Android should not exist
What if I am fully aware that they sell my eyeballs for revenue and I am OK with that because I find the amount of ads to be acceptable compared to the value I get from the product ?
Not all contracts are legal. For example, you are not allowed to sell your kidney, even if you are fully aware of the implications.
Obviously, selling your data is not as harmful to you as selling a kidney. But it is still harmful, and it is also extremely harmful to society when many people do so.
What market are we talking about? Android is a free software. Google subsidized OS development for Android phone vendors to be able to collect more data and support its ad business better. Is this not the case?
Yes, this is exactly the case. Android is Google's opensourced software that's being continously supported and developed by Google. And that also includes Google making deals with partners to install said operating system on their devices, making sure it's compatible across the ecosystem and providing long-term support.
If you order Google to abandon the project, you're effectively ordering to stop them from investing into the operating system while allowing their main competitor to keep subsidizing development of their iOS operating system.
Yeah, it only makes sense if we also require hardware vendors to support installations of other OSs. Which maybe we should do too, though it gets to be a more complicated proposal at that point.
I agree with the first part disagree with the second part. You cannot sell a phone without an operating system. One of Apple's most lucrative business is selling iPhones.
"allowing their main competitor to keep subsidizing development of their iOS operating system."
I do not think this is true. Apple simple spend money to develop iOS so it can sell iPhone. You could not sell cars without engines and you cannot sell mobile devices without operating system. The entire ad money subsidising X phenomenon exists because Google does it, very successfully. I absolutely dislike the concept of surveillance capitalism and I do not want to participate in this. Mobile phone vendors should develop their own OS and price their products accordingly instead of forcing me to consider only iPhone/iOS if I do not want to install some hackware or adware as the OS of my device. I want to pay for the goods I use and it is not ok to give something for "free" when free means that my entire digital life is sold for the higher bidder.
> Android (the OS part, the one you want opensourced) is pretty much not making any revenue (which is easy to see on the earnings report).
All licensed Android phones are also forced to bundle Google apps like Youtube, Chrome, Play Store, Google search, Drive etc. And all these products make Google a LOT of money. Not to mention the amount of personal data it helps Google collect. Google didn't buy and develop Android out of kindness for its customers.
Apple sold around 40% of all smartphones in the US last year.[1] That's pretty close to Google's 46% of adtech that is the motivating statistic of the article.
A spun off Android Inc would be free to make lucrative deals for browsers, search, media and maps and stuff and would have the Play store too. It would do just fine.
Then why didn't that happen naturally? People calling google a monopoly don't see that the future if innovation is megacorps and small businesses that try to ascend to selling out. This world where a business sticks to one problem domain is just a fantasy, it's the software version of a mom+pop. In the world of grownup companies it's Amazon vs. Apple vs. Google vs Walmart vs. Tencent vs. Facebook and maybe eventually the Europeans will decide they miss having clout as more than consumers on the world stage and then there'll be a European megacorp too.
That is exactly what people calling Google a monopoly see, and that is what they want to prevent.
As a rule, Big corporations do not innovate - they form cartels and sit on their products extracting rent. We have already seen the severe drop in innovation in the mobile space, now that the market is settled.
> Just like we're all exclusively eating Chinese chocolate,
- Not chocolate, but I was amazed when I saw a bag of dried apples came from China.
> drinking Chinese beer,
- I'd be more worried about it skunking...
> driving Chinese assembled cars,
This actually reminds me, I forgot to see how that spat where GM didn't want to have to pay taxes on Chinese assembled cars they sell in the US wound up finishing.
> and watching Chinese movies?
Someone made a rather convincing argument that the influence of Chinese financiers in the film industry has contributed to shifts in the movies we get.
Now, there are those who may say 'But were any of those Megacorps?' The Apples were Dole, the cars were GM, and the movies (in question in the argument made) were Disney.
My counterpoint to that is that one has to consider that China in this case is the megacorp, due to the level of involvement/oversight they have over the companies that operate in their country.
This model can already be used right now - and it hasn't been successful at all. Especially when there are other players left in the market that subsidise their development.
They've been bleeding marketshare for a long time. They're essentially the only realistic alternative to Chromium yet their marketshare is eroding. I'm not sure that's a good example of a successful spin off like that.
There's already an open, less invasive forks of Android - LineageOS being the biggest of them. It's easy for a company to be formed around them and continue development. Cyanogen was one of them.
- Ubuntu: Subsidized by Mark Shuttleworths personal fortune.
- Firefox: Most all revenue is in the form of indulgences from Google.
- RaspPi: Broadcom sockpuppet.
- Wikipedia: OK, can't argue with this one.
- Bitcoin: Money laundering, pyramid schemes and currency speculation can hardly be called an 'open source project' IMO.
I agree with Bitcoin being used for shady stuff, but could you explain how it's used for money laundering? My understanding of money laundering is a process of making shady money look less shady. Putting it through anything in Bitcoin will make it look more shady, won't it?
I think the chance that a commercial company is going to spin off into a community-driven non-profit is pretty low. Or at least their chance of success is going to be low. The examples you gave built up their communities over time.
Alternative /additional explanation: Google realise that their business model of selling ads based on
'spying' on users privacy will eventually come to an end because:
- users being increasingly aware of the problem,
- legislation like GDPR everywhere on the horizon,
- Other companies (e.g. Apple) competing on providing better privacy.
So Google is trying to transition to services with defined income
(Cloud, game streaming, Youtube) while it's still easy.
Maybe instead of dragging out a seemingly endless series of customer trust sapping product shutdowns it should just decide what it’s keeping them split the company into what it’s keeping and what it’s killing.
Here’s my prediction of what will finally be left standing:
Search
Search advertising
Maps
Gmail
50% chance they’ll keep their cloud 50% chance it’s already living dead like rackspace.
Google's doubling down on Cloud precisely because they want an additional revenue stream as big as ads; they know their income model is extremely monocultural and any number of things (either regulation or a titanic shift in the ad market, such as mass-adoption of ad-blockers) could hamstring the growth models they're accustom to.
I wouldn't predict they'll shutdown cloud until and unless they're convinced it won't blow up like they hope for them.
