I've not dug into it, but explanations I've read that claim they kinda did have a culture until they reverse-acquired themselves with the DoubleClick purchase have some ring of truth, just from my casual external observation over the company's lifespan. It lines up (c. 2008) with some other things—inline ads going full-evil, the search engine anti-spam efforts evidently drying up (or, at least, entirely failing from then on despite whatever effort they were making), et c.

There's a difference between the informal culture of rank and file employees, how they see themselves and their peers, and the upper management. Culture at the bottom can get diluted by hiring too rapidly and a high degree of churn, which doesn't yield sufficient time for new hires to be assimilated into culture, gradually weakening it.

But at the top, for a public company, the only culture that truly exists is the next quarterly report. Once you're on the "must show XX% quarterly growth" treadmill, your decisions will be dictated by strategies to further that. Unless you have a crazy person at the top willing to burn money and investor sentiment (e.g. Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Jobs. Google doesn't have crazy founders running it anymore, which is why Google Bets are kind of a joke, and why the company continually kills stuff that you need to be in the long hall for to make a success (e.g. gaming studios, red studios -- they finally got a hit Cobra Kai -- and killed it, etc)

That's why some of the earlier comments about understanding Apple's App Store behavior as "good intentioned" is off. That MAY have been the original reason behind Jobs wanting it, to gate keep the platform and protect brand image and quality, but it is NOT the reason for charging high fees today.

Apple made $72 billion on App Store revenue in 2020. Their total revenue was $274 billion, so 26% of all revenue came from the App Store. That is the reason for the inertia in keeping the Store exactly the way it is.

The App Store's purported benefits to the platform: security, quality, etc could all be maintained for a fraction of that. Apple is not spending $72 billion a year on store maintenance. It's very clear this is about money, not high minded principle.

Elsewhere in this thread, someone has suggested that Android makes up a fairly small percentage of Google’s net income. Does that have any bearing on this analysis?

This is a good point. A project within Google that doesn’t move the needle next to it’s search advertising business should not be _driven_ by profit margin. However there are a few reasons why I think this happened within Google Play:

1. Lots of pressure for google products and services to become standalone businesses

2. Too much imbalance of power between business teams and engineering teams within Google Play. The business teams just saw it as copycat App Store and the engineers and product leads didn’t have the influence to overturn this. In some ways this is against what the broader Google culture was thought to have. (Eng/prod > bd).

3. Androids existence as a defense and not as an opportunity to create the future. Android has always been this and it’s engrained culturally.

There are ways to lie with statistics, but the Play Store is a huge cash cow. I play a mobile game where thousands of players at least have spent more than a car in in-app purchase transactions. Someone told me if you're spending less than $1,000 they consider you free to play. One of the key items for high level play you can only unlock after spending $12,000 on an account.

Imagine if Ford could make 30% profit on selling cars, and didn't even have to manufacture the car.

Fortnite alone is worth hundreds of millions to Google. There's a reason they're willing to compromise any supposed principles they had over it.

Then there are additional effects, like how their control over the Play Store impacts their advertising opportunities on Android.