Android probably pays for itself right now. But its primary purpose is forcing about 70% of phones sold globally to have Google apps pre-installed. And mobile ads, as you said.

Is that true though? The Chinese market is huge, and even if most phones are running Android, they aren’t including google apps. But if we exclude Chinese android phones, I would guess that Google doesn’t hit that 70% mark.

Virtually all markets outside of the top wealthy western countries are Android dominated.

I’ve lived in UK where iOS is very common but also in Portugal where the average salary is 800 euros and virtually everyone uses android.

Most of the world can’t afford iPhones

That’s true, but China is 1.4 billion people with not much iPhone penetration either (relatively speaking). That’s 17.5% of the world, so getting to 80% with that handicap (google being blocked in china) seems like a huge problem.

It is not such a big problem as you would imagine. The money comes from businesses, not consumers. As far as I know, the US and EU markets have the highest value consumers, so even Google is outside China, it is making a lot money from Chinese advertisers. The biggest problem for Google is competition from other advertising platforms, I don't remember last time I searched for a product on Google to be honest.

I believe the core ad platform for Google is going to be YouTube, it is the only one I am not leaving now.

Google pays Apple $10B a quarter as search revenue sharing. Chrome/Android are good deals on an alternative analysis basis.