Judge Says Google's Android Lost Money in 2010

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U.S. District Court judge William Alsup, during a discussion about finances in the Oracle vs. Google case, said that the Android platform generated a loss for Google in every quarter of 2010.

Google Inc's Android mobile platform resulted in a net loss for the company in every quarter of 2010, despite generating roughly $97.7 million in revenue for the first quarter of that year, a U.S. judge said in court. The discussion on Thursday of the finances of what has become the world's leading mobile operating software in just four years came during a damages hearing in high stakes litigation between Oracle and Google over smartphone technology.
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When you try to put Android on every piece of junk phone, this is what you get.
 
BoogerBomb said:
That means that Oracle should pay Google right? lol
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Really wish they would. The trial has resulted in plenty of press that Oracle wouldn't have received otherwise, after all.

Also, I'd like to think that someone owes this world reparations for the pain and suffering JVM has inflicted on society. I think that someone should rightly be Oracle.
 
These are 2010 numbers, when Android was just starting to take off. It's not surprising that it was loosing money when it was still in it's infancy. The first popular Android phone was probably the Motorola Droid, and it wasn't released until Nov. of 2009. I would be much more interested to see 2011 numbers.
 
joblo37pam said:
These are 2010 numbers, when Android was just starting to take off. It's not surprising that it was loosing money when it was still in it's infancy. The first popular Android phone was probably the Motorola Droid, and it wasn't released until Nov. of 2009. I would be much more interested to see 2011 numbers.
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Its clever accounting. Android does not make Google much money its self, small amounts from the market could be considered android revenues I guess, but other then that they dont sell it so no revenue there. Now if you consider their Ad sales for the mobile platform thats where they get the money, but that can easily be considered a separate division of the company.
 
who do i complain to about flash and or java crashing chrome every 10 min/ these days. Oracle? they owe me money!!! :)
 
tissimo said:
Its clever accounting. Android does not make Google much money its self, small amounts from the market could be considered android revenues I guess, but other then that they dont sell it so no revenue there. Now if you consider their Ad sales for the mobile platform thats where they get the money, but that can easily be considered a separate division of the company.
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Very true, but that wasn't really the point. I just meant that the numbers (number of phones, revenue, market share, etc.) would only be a fraction of what they would be for 2011.
 
This makes sense since Android is an open source OS that is seeing a lot of support from Google. They make no money from the sales of apps for it. The only reason they even created Android was not to make greater profit but to secure their cash cow search engine.
 
Steve, where are the jokes about Google making more money off of iOS than Android?
 
Well, in 2010 android was pretty new and it was slow and buggy until version 2.2 came along in may 2010. Still many phones did not get the update or did not have version 2.2 until the end of the year. Now Android is the best Phone OS. Smartphones did not get good until xmas 2010. I bought my first smartphone in February 2011 An Optimus V.
 
Android came out in 2008 and did not get good until 2010. The iphone was/is way mroe expensive and more mature OS wise. And had decent hardware. Now Android is supreme! Google makes money with ads and the Market.
 
adonn78 said:
Well, in 2010 android was pretty new and it was slow and buggy until version 2.2 came along in may 2010. Still many phones did not get the update or did not have version 2.2 until the end of the year. Now Android is the best Phone OS. Smartphones did not get good until xmas 2010. I bought my first smartphone in February 2011 An Optimus V.
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My first smart phone was actually he Nokia NGage back in 2004. It had a NES and Super Nintendo Emulator on it, and I even watched full length movies on it. Sometime in 2007 I moved onto the T-Mobile Vario III which ran Windows Mobile 5. Got heavy into rom flashing and even started cooking my own rom. Eventually got it to run WinMO 6.5 and a bunch of all cool stuff. I was even able to get Android running on it perfectly, which was really cool considering how bad WinMO was in comparison. Some reason they didn't include a 3D driver for this phone and getting 3D working was tricky. With Android the 3D worked perfectly with no issues.

I got my G1 in 2009 and just kept with buying Android phones since. Though not my first smart phone.

adonn78 said:
Android came out in 2008 and did not get good until 2010. The iphone was/is way mroe expensive and more mature OS wise. And had decent hardware. Now Android is supreme! Google makes money with ads and the Market.
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If you want to get technical the Android OS was more mature. Here are things Android could do that iPhone couldn't do at first.

MMS
multitasking
and a copied pull down notifications bar

To send a MMS text message required you to email the recipient. I think it took Apple a couple of years to fix that. Multitasking was added much later on and the notification pull down bar was added in iOS 5. So no, the iPhone OS wasn't more mature then Android was. You could say that iPhone only recently caught up to Android.

On the other hand the hardware on the original iPhones were much better. The G1 got stuck with the Qualcomm MSM7201A, which was garbage. Even though it was 112 Mhz faster then the iPhone's chip, the iPhone has a FPU and a far better GPU. Something the Android phones didn't see until a couple of years later, and they needed 2.2 Froyo to include JIT to maximize performance from their FPU's. For some reason the Qualcomm MSM7201A became a staple in most early Android phones.
 
KENNYB said:
Steve, where are the jokes about Google making more money off of iOS than Android?
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They don't make money from Android. They make money from ads and Android Market/Play Store. But that is another division inside company :D.
 
Ashbringer said:
This makes sense since Android is an open source OS that is seeing a lot of support from Google. They make no money from the sales of apps for it. The only reason they even created Android was not to make greater profit but to secure their cash cow search engine.
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Android is deliberately licensed under Apache so that it can be monetized in ways that the kernel can not be.
 
*remember, open source software can be free as in beer and/or free as in liberty.

in the kernel's case, being as it's GPL'ed, it's free as in beer and in some sense liberty.

in the operating system, however, it's under an apache license so it's free in liberty but not in beer
 
mope54 said:
*remember, open source software can be free as in beer and/or free as in liberty.

in the kernel's case, being as it's GPL'ed, it's free as in beer and in some sense liberty.

in the operating system, however, it's under an apache license so it's free in liberty but not in beer
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No, Android is free as in liberty and free as in software. Being under Apache means it isn't copyleft, however, which means OEMs and others are free to change the code without releasing the code for those changes.

Also, common misconception but the GPL does *NOT* prevent you from charging for the product, strictly speaking it is *not* "free as in beer".
 
kllrnohj said:
No, Android is free as in liberty and free as in software. Being under Apache means it isn't copyleft, however, which means OEMs and others are free to change the code without releasing the code for those changes.

Also, common misconception but the GPL does *NOT* prevent you from charging for the product, strictly speaking it is *not* "free as in beer".
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I'm aware of those points they don't change the practical effect that under apache proprietary code can be kept confidential (and therefore monetized) whereas under GPL it can't.

Yes, companies are able to release proprietary code free of charge under apache's license but they won't.

Yes, companies can charge for otherwise freely available code under the GPL license but they won't.

The apache license was specifically chosen to facilitate monetizing development. If companies could not have guaranteed return on their investment they never would have picked android up and ran with it like they did.

It's currently not free software, as you claim. Google releases what it wants when it wants. Some code will never see public eyes and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Up until recently Google would release code after it cherry picked a particular vendor for bearing it's fruit. Now that a handset is being offered directly from Play it will be interested to see how rapidly and freely code comes from Google.
 
mope54 said:
It's currently not free software, as you claim.
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Yes, it is: source.android.com. It's been free as in beer *and* free as in liberty since day 1.

Whether or not the latest and greatest is released there first or a month after the first device ships is irrelevant. They never charged for source, and it's absolutely open source.
 
kllrnohj said:
Yes, it is: source.android.com. It's been free as in beer *and* free as in liberty since day 1.

Whether or not the latest and greatest is released there first or a month after the first device ships is irrelevant. They never charged for source, and it's absolutely open source.
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Go to the site you just linked, click on About, then click on Licensing Information.

There you will see Google explain what I wrote here in this thread:

Why Apache Software License?
We are sometimes asked why Apache Software License 2.0 is the preferred license for Android. For userspace (that is, non-kernel) software, we do in fact prefer ASL2.0 (and similar licenses like BSD, MIT, etc.) over other licenses such as LGPL.

Android is about freedom and choice. The purpose of Android is promote openness in the mobile world, but we don't believe it's possible to predict or dictate all the uses to which people will want to put our software. So, while we encourage everyone to make devices that are open and modifiable, we don't believe it is our place to force them to do so. Using LGPL libraries would often force them to do so.

Here are some of our specific concerns:

LGPL (in simplified terms) requires either: shipping of source to the application; a written offer for source; or linking the LGPL-ed library dynamically and allowing users to manually upgrade or replace the library. Since Android software is typically shipped in the form of a static system image, complying with these requirements ends up restricting OEMs' designs. (For instance, it's difficult for a user to replace a library on read-only flash storage.)

LGPL requires allowance of customer modification and reverse engineering for debugging those modifications. Most device makers do not want to have to be bound by these terms, so to minimize the burden on these companies we minimize usage of LGPL software in userspace.

Historically, LGPL libraries have been the source of a large number of compliance problems for downstream device makers and application developers. Educating engineers on these issues is difficult and slow-going, unfortunately. It's critical to Android's success that it be as easy as possible for device makers to comply with the licenses. Given the difficulties with complying with LGPL in the past, it is most prudent to simply not use LGPL libraries if we can avoid it.

The issues discussed above are our reasons for preferring ASL2.0 for our own code. They aren't criticisms of LGPL or other licenses. We do feel strongly on this topic, even to the point where we've gone out of our way to make sure as much code as possible is ASL2.0. However, we love all free and open source licenses, and respect others' opinions and preferences. We've simply decided that ASL2.0 is the right license for our goals.
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[empahsis addeed]
 
mope54 said:
Go to the site you just linked, click on About, then click on Licensing Information.

There you will see Google explain what I wrote here in this thread:


[empahsis addeed]
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Uh, that does not say the same thing you said at all, in fact it agrees with me. I think you are getting confused. *ANDROID* is free both in beer and in freedom. Derivatives of Android (aka, what OEMs ship), however, are not necessarily free as in beer *or* free as in freedom. But Android itself absolutely, 100% is. They've never charged for it, and they've never restricted what you can do with it.

But I'm actually struggling how you can read the line "Android is about freedom" and end up with "Android isn't free".
 
kllrnohj said:
...Android itself absolutely, 100% is. They've never charged for it, and they've never restricted what you can do with it.
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Not technically accurate. The terms of the Apache License, like most other licenses of its type (MIT, BSD, etc.) require that those who redistribute source or binaries include a copy of the Apache License, or to re-license derivative works under a similar license. Dedicating a derivative work to the public domain, for example, would be a breach of the license.

It's a minor point, but one worth knowing.
 
When you aim to give everything away free, this tends to happen.
 
kllrnohj said:
Uh, that does not say the same thing you said at all, in fact it agrees with me. I think you are getting confused.
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You think that your position
kllrnohj said:
common misconception but the GPL does *NOT* prevent you from charging for the product
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is closer to
while we encourage everyone to make devices that are open and modifiable, we don't believe it is our place to force them to do so. Using LGPL libraries would often force them to do so.
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than
mope54 said:
Android is deliberately licensed under Apache so that it can be monetized in ways that the kernel can not be.
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I'm don't see any reason to continue discussing this with you.
 
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