I've written more posts detailing how Android is *limiting* Google than I care to link to. And just 3 days ago, I wrote:

There is no iPhone vs Android smartphone war. It is only Apple vs Samsung.

This is not a war between iOS and Android. In fact, if that was a war, Apple won. Resoundingly.

Thus, I am not at all surprised to read how iPhone continues to dominate sales at nearly all (non zero) price points or how Apple's iPhone continues to garner the vast majority of smartphone profits or that Moto is barely treading water, HTC is losing money and Sony is flailing.

But I am a little surprised that one of Android's chief proponents, Kevin Tofel, has dared break the news to the easily angered Android fanboys that "Android is faltering as iOS strengthens":

Based on a growing number of data points, Android’s sales dominance may be nearing its apex while iOS is on the rise. Even as a daily user of both an Android smartphone and tablet, I can’t deny the facts that Android’s partners are not doing as well as they used to. The conclusion that Android’s best days are behind is surely arguable, but I am starting to think that Android is on the decline for several reasons.

I certainly don't need to read the comments to his piece to know that he is being flamed as a stupid Apple fanboi -- and probably some sort of sheep faggot who hates the Internet.

Most smartphones out there are Android devices. I ask all of you Android users:

Have you been harmed by...MALWARE!?

How?

What were the costs and other damages to you and your business due to Android...MALWARE!

I'm guessing virtually zero, right? Or exactly zero, perhaps?

Mobile Marketer, which really should know better, has a long piece on how GOOGLE (may) NOT DOING ENOUGH TO FIGHT MALWARE!

The *entire* piece repeatedly lays the charge that:

malware continues to be a problem for Google

The *entire* piece is based -- solely -- on direct quotes from two private companies that *directly* benefit when users and potential users fear (not experience) harm may come to their smartphone:

“Google figured out there are a lot of malicious apps on the market and it is getting worse every day,” said Dmitry Bestuzhev, head of global research and analysis team for Latin America at Kaspersky Labs, Woburn, MA. “Before it becomes a real nightmare, they wanted to filter out malicious apps.

“Bouncer is a much-needed step, however it seems like it will not be completely effective in detecting all malicious apps,” he said.

Being that the article is written by a "journalist" we must have a second source! (whether or not that 'source' is just data culled from a web page)

In the mean time, malware continues to be a problem for Google.

McAfee Labs reported last year that the amount of malware targeted at Android devices jumped nearly 37 percent from the previous quarter, with nearly all new mobile malware in the third quarter targeted at Android.

What bullshit.

How many people have been harmed? What is the *real* damage? The costs?

How many apps are malware?

Where are these apps from? Who are downloading them?

Writing a press release on behalf of security companies does not actually help users.

Engadget has a revealing piece on how "product managers" working for AT&T. These "product" people determine not only which smartphones the company will promote at their stores, but how those devices will look, operate and function:

It begins with the creation of a formal document that lists the various traits and features AT&T desires. Since it takes so long to crank out a phone, the company needs to predict what the market's going to look like over a year in advance. This means our friends [ATT product managers] Dante and Chris have to ask themselves a few questions to hone their forecasting skills. What will be considered state of the art by then? How can we offer a truly groundbreaking product at that time? What will be on the low-end? What are customers going to want their phones to do? Answering these questions isn't easy, which is why AT&T has an advanced planning group that looks into all of the chipsets, displays and other components on the horizon.

The length of time a phone takes from conception to launch depends on a few factors: if the project was initiated by AT&T and the OEM needs extra time to work all of the crucial conceptual stuff, there are loads of extra vetting, testing and refining that needs to take place before the final product is ready. 

This probably helps explain why so many Android devices are so exactly like one another -- and why there is so much bloatware and non-personalization in these devices.

But I think it also portends how Google, which controls Android and which will soon own smartphone maker Motorola, will become still more closely aligned with carriers.

And no, not for the benefit of the users.

Just last night I write a post that goes semi-viral:

Has there ever been a bigger, costlier failure in high tech than Android?

PandoDaily jumps on this -- without attribution -- and this afternoon writes:

How Google can save Android:

The numbers ought to ring alarm bells in Mountain View. They prove the folly of Google’s Android business model: Free and “open” (or clopen) may make money someday, but it’s hard to see how it’s ever going to make Apple-like profits.

But what has a free Android done for Google? Not much, really. According to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, Google makes between $6 and $10 in ad revenue per Android user per year. That’s not nothing; going by the latest reported rate of 255 million new Android phones a year, that’s about $2.5 billion in revenue on Android. But that pales in comparison to Apple’s iPhone revenues ($20 billion in the last quarter alone).

Exactly as I"ve stated.

There's a lot of greatness in Silicon Valley. But, honestly, most of it's just copies and rip-offs.

We should not expect less from the bloggers that cover the Valley.

I ask you: Has there even been a bigger, costlier failure in high tech than Android?

Yes, I realize that merely by asking the question Android fanboys -- and others -- will flame me.

Android is only 3 years old! It dominates *global* smartphone markets. It has already surpassed Symbian to become the #1 smartphone platform in the world -- and in the US.

Very soon, there will be more apps that for iPhone.

Numerous vendors all around the world offer an array of Android devices at all price points for all markets.

Android is one of the most successful high-tech products ever!

Maybe. But I'm not so sure. As a devout user of iPhone -- not iPhone 4S -- it's easy for me to say that iPhone is "superior" or to note that iPhone makes the most money or that it is the most popular smartphone in the world and that with only 3 models iPhone nearly matched market leader Samsung in total smartphone sales for 2011, or that iPhone 4S remains a global phenomenon, surpassing Samsung's Q4 2011 sales and helping to put iPhone within striking distance of Android's US market share.

I won't say these things because I'm not interested in a temporary sales slide but in something more fundamental: Android is a cost center. This is, I believe, the primary reason Google -- which eagerly touts any positive sounding numbers related to Android -- continues to refuse to break out any cost/revenue numbers associated with Android.

By my estimate, Google alone will have spent $20 billion on Android by the time its acquisition of Motorola is complete early this year. 

$20 billion

Yet most of the money Google receives from "mobile" comes via mobile search and most of those searches come via iPhone.

Google has spent unaccounted millions, possibly more, in building a tightly integrated Android operating system with its own Gmail and Google Voice and Google search and Google maps and turn-by-turn navigation and, despite the "open" moniker, demands every single "Android" vendor use each of these ("for the users"). 

But they are generating zero dollars in revenues. Or damn close to zero.

Consider some of the biggest, most capable high tech companies in the world:

LG. Sony. HTC. Motorola. Look at their earnings statements and listen to their guidance.

Are any generating *revenues* off Android? Only Samsung, which has wholesale copied the design and marketing/distribution of iPhone is making real money.

Perhaps there are simply too many handset makers with too many models, driving the price down and/or creating confusion in the marketplace?

For all the billions of apps downloaded, the revenues that have flowed to the Android developer community have been miserly compared to iPhone's developer community.

It's not just that Google is losing billions on Android, the entire ecosystem remains in the negative!

Why?

Is it because the iPhone is so superior and Apple so well managed that they are able to capture nearly all the profits the entire global smartphone market has to give?

Is it because Google has spent the better part of a decade training users to demand free content, information and access?

Does a tightly integrated media platform, such as only Apple and Amazon have built, really so fully determine the fortunes of the larger ecosystem?

Does the golden Google business model simply not translate to mobile?

Is it time? Google has rapidly iterated Android and done its best to build applications that work best and only for Android and built out its developer community and marketplace and funneled money to handset makers to build Android. Are we approaching, finally, that point where everything aligns and the platform starts raining down money upon all its participants?

If so, I think that Google buying Samsung/HTC/LG/Sony competitor, Motorola, might throw a wrench in those plans. And the outstanding lawsuits against Android, from Microsoft, Apple, Skyhook, Oracle and others, might further complicate any dreams of net gains.

Not to mention that Windows Phone may finally be ready to compete against Android, further siphoning off any potential revenues.

I would like to hear your thoughts. As I write this, Android has been a massive money pit. Why? And how long will investors tolerate this?

As I've been writing here for well over a year, even if *Android* is winning, and really, it's not, that does not mean that Google is winning. 

http://brianshall.com/search/node/google%20android%20search

As I have stated repeatedly, ignore the fact that Facebook is on every smartphone. Forget that *most* mobile searches come from iPhone. Pay no attention to Kindle Fire and other versions of Android that have been Google-strip-mined.

If most of the ecommerce via mobile is coming from iPhone, put it out of your head.

When you read that Sony, LG, Motorola and HTC can't make a profit from Android, assume that's a temporary blip.

All the complaining about fragmentation is not your concern.

The *fundamental* threat to Android is not from Apple or Facebook or Microsoft. That threat comes from Google, itself. From Google's past.

The smartphone is the computer! The smartphone will this year eclipse the PC install base. The mobile web is the web. Mobile searches annd activity will dominate our online activity.

Mobile is not a *supplement* to the PC, it is a replacement.

All of Google's money comes from the PC and the stationary web. 

They make billions upon billions of dollars, every quarter, from ads on PC web pages and on Youtube videos.

But there is *zero* guarantee that these ads and this business model will provide more or even the same revenues. 

Android could generate ten times more traffic, 100x more data and provide far more real-time, localized, personalized information to Google. Which ought to make Google more valuable.

But Google is not valuable because of all the personal information it has on each of us. Google is valuable because it's business model, of selling all that personal information to advertisers happy to pay it because enough users will click on the ads which provide value to the advertisers is optimized for a world that is dying: PCs and the stationary web.

Who says Google can simply port its business model to the smartphone?

Facebook makes almost nothing off the smartphone. Twitter makes nothing off the smartphone. Apple makes all its smartphone money off the hardware itself, not the software and services.

Google has the greatest business model ever. But it was born for a world that is quickly coming to an end. 

Even TechCrunch finally clues in:

Google’s reliance on search revenues derived from web searches in a browser, its former strength, is now not sufficient to guarantee growth.

Google’s focus on Android is a necessary but not sufficient part of confronting these trends. It gives the company a platform into mobile, but it does not do enough to offset the impact of the relative shift in traffic. 

I'm never surprised when I call it first. Or when I get it completely right.  I must say, though, that it always surprises me how long it takes the kool-aid drinkers to catch up.

Has anyone heard from Google co-founder Sergey Brin since co-founder Larry Page staged his bloodless coup and re-took control of the company?

Is he alive?

Still working at Google?

Even on earnings calls, Brin does not speak nor is his name ever mentioned.

I ask not because I'm concerned, which I am, but because we were told that it was Brin who was leading the good fight against the not-good anti-freedom government of China.

Because of the government's restrictions on the Internet, on freedom, on Google, on Google results -- and their obvious attempts to (repeatedly) hack into Google, the company proudly and boldly proclaimed they were exiting China.

Upon which I called bullshit.

Many, many times.

Nearly a year ago -- before Page took over -- I wrote:

Google won't abandon the world's most populous market, the planet's second largest economy. I think we all know that if we want smartphones, at least iPhones or Androids, that we pretty much have to take product from China. 

Only a few months ago I confidently stated, in that way of mine:

I have told you many times that Google's business model is *predicated* on its continued control, ownership and tollway management of the global Internet. In all its forms. This is why no amount of money is too much to spend taking out Apple and Microsoft -- which have consumed a *minimum* of $20 billion by my count, with almost zero return. The return is less important, it's limiting and possibly destroying Microsoft and Apple that is of utmost importance to Google. Likewise, no matter what it takes, Google will spend it to ensure Facebook cannot survive, and that Twitter cannot make a buck. Nor Yelp, nor Groupon, nor anyone else that *might* get between you and data/content/information that Google could place a Google Ad next to.

But what of China?

Despite what Google has told you about not donig business in China because of restrictions, know that it's bullshit. One of the *primary* reasons for buying Motorola was to use it to get back into China. Same with the purchase of Android. 

But wait. Wasn't Brin the good guy? The one prepared to sacrifice potential China mainland profits because of the very principals Google was founded upon? Wasn't there something about his parents and communist Russia, we were told?

All bullshit, dear readers. All bullshit.

And the company you and I reliy upon to provide us unbiased access to information is more than happy to to do otherwise. 

Which really ought to tell you all you need to know about them.

From Google's head of Asia Pacific operations, only yesterday:

“We never left China, and we continue to believe in the market,” Alegre said. “It’s a very vibrant Internet market. We have some of the best employees at Google and we continue to grow not only our revenue but also our headcount in the country.”

Google never left China?

China has a "very vibrant Internet market"?

Google "continues to grow" their China presence?

Are those directly verifiable lies? Or is everything you previously heard from Google so?

I am not naive. I know that there's a billion Internet users in China. I know that Android is thriving in China -- with various flavors that seek to lock out Google. I know that at the end of last week Google missed earnings estimates and bright and early Monday morning (in China) they got on the phone with Bloomberg to reassure Big Investor that Google truly is -- still -- a growth story.

I just want Google to stop being pussies, to stop deceiving me, to stop telling me one thing while doing another. I want to be able to trust Google and trust Google's results -- about anything.

As much as Eric Schmidt was a tad creepy, at least you knew where you stod. Under Larry Page, I can't trust Google about anything they say or do.

Do not expect this to change. Page is determined to make sure that no crevice of the global Internet is out of Google's reach and that no where you go on the web, nothing you ask, nothing you seek, is available without Google extracting its toll.

The web is growing and morphing. Page is determined to grow and morph Google to remain in lockstep with the web. Fair enough. But what you thought Google was and what you thought Google stood for and what you thought Google offered is now gone, forever.

You should at least be aware of this.

Nearly two years ago, Google co-founder Sergey Brin was asked about China:

Mr. Brin lived in the Soviet Union until he was nearly 6 years old, and he said the experience of living under a totalitarian system that censored political speech influenced his thinking — and Google’s policy. “It has definitely shaped my views, and some of my company’s views,” he said.

I believe Brin was telling the truth. I just don't believe that Page, Andy Rubin and the others actually running Google give a shit. A compromised (wired and wireless) web, where Google can insert itself between you and the data/content/resources you seek is more important than a free and open web where Google may not be dominant.

This is what giant, for-profit corporations do.

A pretty devastating piece from Bloomberg on Google's grand Android vision that mirrors my "show me the money" calls from everyone's favorite free smartphone operating system:

Since Google Inc. (GOOG) introduced its Android operating system in 2007, the company’s strategy has been simple: Give it to developers for free and make money when consumers click ads on the Web or through apps. That model is hitting a snag.

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Chinese Internet giants Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are using Android as a building block for their devices, skipping preloaded applications such as Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube that generate ad revenue for Google, as well as its app store. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, which is gaining ground on Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad, comes with none of those apps.

“The Fire may be the best Android tablet out there, even though it’s the least Android-y of all of them,” said Noah Elkin, an analyst at New York-based research firm EMarketer Inc. “The Google experience is very much in the background.”

The best Android tablet out there is the least "Android-y" of them all?

That's a kick in the balls.

And a validation of the tightly integrated ecosystem strategy that Apple and Amazon are leading with. No, such a strategy may not be the superior choice in, say, five years, but it sure is now.

Of course, after you kick em in the balls what comes next?

Well, apparently, you piss on them while they're down:

Many buyers may not know that the Kindle Fire, estimated to be the best-selling Android tablet ever, thanks to strong holiday sales, is even an Android tablet.

The article does make the rather astute point that even with mobile/Android/tablets, most of Google's revenues come from search advertising, not apps, for example. On the app side, Google loses little.

I'm not sure, however, that they are counting all the factors. Every single "less Android-y" Android device that sells means thousands upon thousands of datapoints that may never make their way into the Google database. Which directly impacts the overall quality of their search data and advertising response.

With Google's version of Android pushed to the background, there is now ample opportunity for Amazon, Baidu and others to cut deals with Bing, for example, or a revamped Yahoo, to provide search and display advertising. Doubtless, any product searches on such devices naturally direct us not toward Google, but to Amazon or another entity. Again, Google is cut out of the loop, entirely.

Google knows this and isn't sitting still. As much as I've given shit to Google for their false "free and open" marketing language, I did not realize how strict they were with demands for inclusion of all core Google applications:

So far, Google has pursued an all-or-nothing approach to licensing its suite of applications. In contract talks, licensees may choose to use all or most of Google’s mobile apps, or none of them. This means that to get popular apps such as Gmail and Google Maps, the licensee may also need to agree to use Google Talk, a Skype-like app for making phone calls, or Contacts, a tool for managing contact details. (emphasis mine)

Google insists on these terms to ensure that consumers aren’t prevented from using apps that have become de facto standards, and because Google’s apps are designed to work well together, Android chief Andy Rubin has said.

And for fuck's sake, does anyone at Google ever speak the truth publicly? For a company that holds all our private digital history, shouldn't we demand they be level with us -- any of the time? They require all apps because they "work well together". Jesus H. I use Gmail all the time. Youtube often, Google search some of the time. Google Earth rarely. Google Talk never. 

I am not the worse for this.

Bloomberg than reminds us why we should expect hardware vendors to seek out competing platforms, such as Windows Phone, even while they cave to Google's demands:

Many device makers have little choice other than to take a full suite of Google apps. Without Android, companies such as Samsung Electronics Co.  and HTC Corp. would have no platform for competing with Apple. With no must-have apps or services of their own, these device makers would be at a disadvantage without Google apps.

I still contend, however, that even the smart analysts who work for Bloomberg are missing the big picture. As even their own article states, *industrywide* revenue for mobile advertising is expected to grow rapidly and reach almost $21 billion in 2015.

Let's say Google takes the lion's share, say, 80%. That's approximately $17 billion. That's what Google generates *now* -- in five months.

Everyone continues to believe that mobile advertising will be supplemental! That Google's PC-based, stationary web advertising revenues will continue to grow and prosper and bring in tens of billions each year and that mobile will *add* to that.

I believe this is a fallacy.

If so, Google's 2015 revenues, I suspect, will be maybe only slightly higher than 2011.

[Hat tip to Turley Muller]