Same can be said for Google, right? Google is playing an entirely different game than having paid-for-products but instead funneling products into the money-printing Ads machine.
>But how many acquisitions has Google screwed up completely?
I actually don't know and am very curious, how many? More or less than other similar companies? From my memory it's not many but I could be very wrong. Firebase for example, is alive and strong and rarely gets mentioned.
I don't think every company needs to have the same type of business model. Google became popular because it made really great products that were all free* which increased adoption. Maybe some of them (like say, Search) would have never gotten popular if they had charged for it right away. I'm not convinced there's a single right path.
>it was revealed in the Oracle trial how relatively little Android makes in profit
It makes sense though, right? I don't even know how Android would make money directly (ok, I do know of ways, not sure if that's how it is) but it's a precursor for making money from the Play Store.
Look at the diversity of profitable lines that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have gone into over the last two decades and compare to the number of failed attempts that Google had at trying to diversify.
I’m sure Oracle was counting Ad revenue coming from Android when calculating profits.
Then again, look at the revenue mix of the other companies to see how well they were able to move into new markets
- Apple - phones, tablets, watches, computers, accessories, services, and even the AppleTV+ series have been getting rave reviews.
Apple Arcade even isn’t in any danger of being cancelled.
- Microsoft - Windows, Server software, Azure is a strong second, at least they didn’t cancel XBox and I bet their streaming game service will be around for awhile.
- Amazon (same disclaimer I work at AWS): Amazon retail, AWS, Twitch, advertising, Prime Video, the Alexa devices
- Facebook - FB proper, WhatsApp, Instagram -yes two of those are acquisitions. But how many acquisitions has Google screwed up completely?
And then you have Google.
- YouTube is believed to be barely break even from a profit standpoint
- it was revealed in the Oracle trial how relatively little Android makes in profit . Yes I realize the numbers are old. But what has changed since then? By the time of the trial, Android already had the dominant market share. Google pays Apple a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine. That has to be more than Google is making from Android per year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...
After all these years, everything that Google has don outside of advertising has been a failure as far as profitability.