this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Android, advertising and maps (this last one is a bit of a stretch)
One thing I don't understand about this situation is that they took what was almost certainly a profitable service and abandoned it. Meanwhile, they have services like Gmail and Maps which can't be profitable, in my opinion, and just shove resources at them. They're way too set on user data and advertising. It's a shame
I imagine gmail and maps provides good data on user preferences and activities, which is perfect data for advertisers. Track where they go and who they communicate with.
That's definitely what they're after, if you ask me. But if you ask them, they'd claim your privacy is protected...
They oftentimes make a decision like this when their internal math tells them that the resources they put into domains could make them more money if they were put in another product. If you consider the opportunity cost, it could make sense to Google to make a change like this.
From our perspective, it's crazy, but it's easy to forget the huge scale of the money they are dealing with.
They aren't profitable, neither is Photos, but they are considered essential applications that keep users bought into the google ecosystem and are necessary for android to remain competitive.
Using that argument, domains could be used to upsell customers. Oh you want a domain? You know what? We'lll give you a year of gmail business (whatever that's called) for half the price! Or maybe you fancy a 100$ Cloud Services voucher?
That way you can lock in customers.
But what percentage of their userbase wants to use them for domains. I'm sure it was profitable, but I doubt they were making as much on that as they could elsewhere. A service making them $50 million a year might not be enough for them to decide to continue with it when they are regularly dealing with products that make hundreds of millions or even billions from. It might just not be worth the effort.
I've used Android since the early days (I think as early as KitKat?) and I've been thinking about switching to Apple in recent years. I'm just tired of privacy being a line that's crossed over all the time. So if they want to retain more customers they need to start treating our data with respect
The open nature of Android allow you to be the owner of your data. Using Graphene OS is even better than the best iphone ever.
I don't think most customers really care about their privacy.
I'm not entirely sure Apple is way too much better. They still mine a ton of days from you, they might just not sell as much as blatantly as Google.
Gmail is probably squeezed in on the servers running GSuite (the business version of Gmail). And I imagine it's very profitable from small/mid even large businesses.
Same with maps.
There will be companies that have tracking and planning software built ontop of maps, and for these uses it requires API keys.
General users using it for free will provide great information and data (eg, detecting/tracking traffic jams), but their usage probably "fits" around the paid usage