Despite the fact that Apple and Google are rivals, Google is still the default search engine for mobile Safari, which is the pre-installed web browser on iPads and iPhones, primarily due to money aspects.
According to court documents that were revealed very recently, $1 million is the amount Google paid Apple in 2014 for the privilege of default access to the hundreds of millions of iPhone users.
The lawsuit of Oracle against Google alleging that the search firm of infringing on Oracle’s patents for programming language Java in its Android operating system was the case that brought the above information to light.
Oracle’s lawyers revealed that Apple and Google shared a portion of the revenue Google received from showing adverts to iOS users, in addition to the $1bn payment, which had been reported as a rumour by TechChurch in 2013 but not confirmed until now. Although it wasn’t clear who got the larger end of that deal, according to Oracle, “at one point in time” that share was 34%.
Allowing it to continue to cash in on iOS, the payments kept Google as the default search engine for mobile Safari. For Apple, Google being the default is important. For example, the new app was criticised for its error-ridden maps when Apple switched from Google Maps to its own in-house team for the default map app on iPhones in 2012. According to Apple, after three year the default app was used three times as much as Google’s own app.
This meant Google being able to reach out to the millions of users who Google can’t get data from or show adverts to.
Apple is already detaching itself from Google search: for example, the default search engine on Siri is Microsoft’s Bing, and that cannot be changed by the user.
Why Google was so eager to pay Apple huge sums of money for access to its users were revealed by other figures that were released in court. In its lifetime, revenues of $31bn and profit of $22bn have been generated by Google’s Android operating system, the most popular in the world.
In comparison, in the fourth quarter of 2015 alone, Apple generated $32.2bn revenue from the iPhone. And this figure does not include the income from the App Store and iAd platforms, each of which is the most direct comparators for Google’s Android revenue.
There are two ways that Google makes money from Android - it takes a proportion of the sales of apps and media on the Google Play Store, and it shows display advertising to Android users.
In stark contrast to Apple, Google does not receive any revenue from the sale of Android phones apart from its own Nexus and Pixel-branded devices. Since the firm can still profit by showing them adverts while it does not have to expend the energy of developing a whole operating system for them and hence the users using iOS are as valuable to Google as Android users.
Google said that Oracle and the court should never have furnished the revenue figures in pubic and the company is clearly unhappy at the disclosure. Oracle’s lawyer improperly disclosed “extremely sensitive information”, Google complained to federal judge that and asked for the court records to be redacted and sealed.
“Google does not publicly allocate revenues or profits to Android separate and apart from Google’s general business. That non-public financial data is highly sensitive, and public disclosure could have significant negative effects on Google’s business,” the company said in the court filing.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
According to court documents that were revealed very recently, $1 million is the amount Google paid Apple in 2014 for the privilege of default access to the hundreds of millions of iPhone users.
The lawsuit of Oracle against Google alleging that the search firm of infringing on Oracle’s patents for programming language Java in its Android operating system was the case that brought the above information to light.
Oracle’s lawyers revealed that Apple and Google shared a portion of the revenue Google received from showing adverts to iOS users, in addition to the $1bn payment, which had been reported as a rumour by TechChurch in 2013 but not confirmed until now. Although it wasn’t clear who got the larger end of that deal, according to Oracle, “at one point in time” that share was 34%.
Allowing it to continue to cash in on iOS, the payments kept Google as the default search engine for mobile Safari. For Apple, Google being the default is important. For example, the new app was criticised for its error-ridden maps when Apple switched from Google Maps to its own in-house team for the default map app on iPhones in 2012. According to Apple, after three year the default app was used three times as much as Google’s own app.
This meant Google being able to reach out to the millions of users who Google can’t get data from or show adverts to.
Apple is already detaching itself from Google search: for example, the default search engine on Siri is Microsoft’s Bing, and that cannot be changed by the user.
Why Google was so eager to pay Apple huge sums of money for access to its users were revealed by other figures that were released in court. In its lifetime, revenues of $31bn and profit of $22bn have been generated by Google’s Android operating system, the most popular in the world.
In comparison, in the fourth quarter of 2015 alone, Apple generated $32.2bn revenue from the iPhone. And this figure does not include the income from the App Store and iAd platforms, each of which is the most direct comparators for Google’s Android revenue.
There are two ways that Google makes money from Android - it takes a proportion of the sales of apps and media on the Google Play Store, and it shows display advertising to Android users.
In stark contrast to Apple, Google does not receive any revenue from the sale of Android phones apart from its own Nexus and Pixel-branded devices. Since the firm can still profit by showing them adverts while it does not have to expend the energy of developing a whole operating system for them and hence the users using iOS are as valuable to Google as Android users.
Google said that Oracle and the court should never have furnished the revenue figures in pubic and the company is clearly unhappy at the disclosure. Oracle’s lawyer improperly disclosed “extremely sensitive information”, Google complained to federal judge that and asked for the court records to be redacted and sealed.
“Google does not publicly allocate revenues or profits to Android separate and apart from Google’s general business. That non-public financial data is highly sensitive, and public disclosure could have significant negative effects on Google’s business,” the company said in the court filing.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
