by Pablo Carlier.
"Google has always been about inferring and serving up information. Facebook is about implicit actions. The new Google+ design is an extension of that thinking. And as Vic Gundotra, Google’s Senior Vice President of Google+ said: “We have put Google in Google+."
Om Malik on Google+ redesign.
Amazon.com Inc is known in the advertising industry as the sleeping giant because the world’s largest Internet retailer harbors a trove of consumer-spending data…
Amazon is a singular company. They run a gigantic retail operation virtually at zero profit. They excel at delivering goods to customers in an inexpensive, efficient and satisfactory way. In many ways, Amazon is the perfect store.
They just do not make money from selling. What is their long-term business plan, then?
It’s simple. They are the new and improved Google. Google 2.0.
Google entices users with an exceptional search engine for free. Millions search there. Google takes the knowledge of what people search, and resells that knowledge to advertisers.
Amazon entices users with an exceptional shopping experience, and takes almost no cut. Millions shop there. Amazon takes the knowledge of what people actually purchase, and, now, is reselling that knowledge to advertisers.
If you were to pick a knowledge base to market your product, would you rather get the users that search for your product or the users that buy your product? Me too.
There it is. Amazon just became a mighty player in the ad-selling arena. And Google faces yet another behemoth to go against.
I argued a couple of months ago that Android could well not exist, and the picture would not change much. It served as a strong brand for Samsung’s recognition, but now that the market sees the value in Samsung itself, its hardware, its ecosystem, Android is a second rate player. Actually, people don’t buy and Android phone from Samsung, they buy a Samsung phone that runs Android Apps, interacts with Samsung TVs, looks good and is cheaper than an iPhone.
That is why Google builds its own hardware now. And Microsoft. Vertically integrated has won.
That’s it. I said it. There is no such thing as a war between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
There is a war indeed between Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, RIM, Motorola etc., for the profits in the handset space. Apple controls 73% of those profits.
There is also a war for the mobile ads revenue between platforms (iOS and Android mainly) to generate as much money from advertising as possible. Apparently, iOS quadruples the advertising revenue for Google that Android brings.
What can we extract from these facts?
Conclusion 1: Apple is eating almost all the money, and Samsung is reaping the leftovers of the cake, with regards to mobile phone profits. Basically everyone else is bleeding money quarter after quarter. This game is about making money, not about unit sales or other stuff. No war to be seen between Android and Apple here. Android is a platform for advertising created by Google, it does not play this game.
Conclusion 2: In the mobile advertising space, Google is the big fish, and it makes much more money from iOS than it does from Android. Interesting, but still no war here. This is a game about making the most money from ad prints. Sheer volume is meaningful here, as are user habits, willingness to purchase online services and more. Google does not care which phone you use, as long as the advertising revenue goes to their pocket. Android and iOS are not competing here. Android brings the sheer volume, iOS brings the revenue-per-user. Win-win.
Who is losing?
I dare say Apple wins big hardware money, Google wins advertising money, Samsung wins little hardware money. Everyone else loses money everywhere.
Android could really not exist: it has a strong userbase, but it really does not mean much for anybody. Samsung makes very good hardware that would sell equally well with their own Bada OS. Google makes tons of ad money from iOS, and it would make money from every other platform in the world… Even its own, that loses them money every quarter. Apple is generating profits at the stunning pace of $128 million a day. No real impact from Android here.
There really is no war. Where the dollars are, they are well controlled by Apple, Google and somewhat Samsung. Android just happens to have become the Symbian of the 2010’s: large user count, almost irrelevant financially for everyone. And it seems everybody’s happy this way.
Let there be love.
"There’s a lot to be lost. All the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it."
Sergey Brin - On Web freedom.
You mean you can’t sell it, right Sergey?
(Source: Guardian)
"R&D expenditures on a stand-alone basis, in absolute or relative terms, do not correlate with disruptive growth. Essentially, you cannot buy innovation."
Horace Dediu, always data in hand, always spot-on.
(Source: asymco.com)
This is what happens when you no longer Google something. You start “Siring” it.
And, more importantly, Apple is sticking itself between you and Google, by offering direct search access to sites like Wikipedia and Yelp — and many more sites and apps to come, no doubt. Siri doesn’t have to go through Google Search, and it doesn’t show you any Google ads. And that should be scary to the folks at Google, which still makes the vast majority of its profit from search advertising.
Ben Brooks quotes Dan Frommer’s thoughts on this.
(Source: splatf.com)
When Apple’s market cap hits $400 billion, they’ll be worth more than Microsoft and Google — combined.
They’re now less than $20 billion away from that happening.
My take: yeah, sure. Have I read this somewhere before?
And the claim chowder goes on and on. For the moment, some pundits do not seem to realize that there’s no Tablet market, just an iPad market.
Patrick Rhone telling any competitor who still thinks he stands a chance against the iPad to shut up, stop crying and start creating a new market.
I am inclined to agree with him, at least in the consumer space. I still believe that there is room for an enterprise-grade tablet device. But that’s a whole other story.
Sit back and enjoy Patrick’s rant.
Apple did not beat you with the iPad. They beat you with the iPad market. A market they created out of the ashes of burning netbooks, low cost laptops, and PCs that no one really liked or wanted in the first place. There simply was no other option at the time available for them to buy otherwise. Apple created that option.
