What things has Microsoft tried that have been outside of their four or so verticals that have been around for ages (Windows, Office, Cloud, Gaming)? Google alone has nearly 1:1 mappings: Android/Chrome OS, Workspace (Docs, Gmail, Calendar, etc), Cloud, YouTube Gaming and Stadia just died), on top of all the other products with >1B users like Drive, Photos, Play Store, etc. Microsoft even failed with Windows Mobile whereas Google has the Pixel line.
Microsoft went from “Windows Everywhere” and selling boxed software to cloud, cross platform development, Office365 subscriptions and Office working everywhere, embracing open source to the point where even SQL Server runs on Linux, Azure and gaming,
Pixel - Google sold less than 1 million Pixels last quarter
Android is not really all that profitable and Google still ends up paying Apple $18 billion+ a year to actually reach mobile consumers with money to spend. The $26 Billion in profit number was over 6 years
> Android is not really all that profitable and Google still ends up paying Apple $18 billion+ a year to actually reach mobile consumers with money to spend.
So, hear me out. What do you think Google would need to pay Apple if Android didn't exist, and everyone? Would it be the same amount as in reality, or would it perhaps be way more? Pretty obviously the latter. So that delta + Play store sales are the economic value of Android.
> The $26 Billion in profit number was over 6 years
That you think a product going from literally nothing to $26 billion in cumulative profit in 6 years would be disappointing is just totally detached from reality. To put this in perspective, in that same time period of 2009-2015 (which I assume your "6 years" means) Amazon made a total of $3 billion in profit.
A better criticism would be that the number is unlikely to be correct, since Oracle would have inflated it as much as humanly possible for the legal case. But that's not the argument you made.
> So, hear me out. What do you think Google would need to pay Apple if Android didn't exist, and everyone? Would it be the same amount as in reality, or would it perhaps be way more?
Considering that Apple has most of the affluent users in every market, would it be that much more?
Apple makes more in mobile from Google than google makes from Android more than likely.
> That you think a product going from literally nothing to $26 billion in cumulative profit in 6 years would be disappointing is just totally detached from reality. To put this in perspective, in that same time period of 2009-2015 (which I assume your "6 years" means) Amazon made a total of $3 billion in profit.
Amazon was a low margin retail company and was spending billions on infrastructure. Android already had more market share than iOS by then and was already dominant. How much do you think Apple made on the iPhone during that time period? Has Apple or any other BigTech company had to pay a direct competitor for placement?
> A better criticism would be that the number is unlikely to be correct, since Oracle would have inflated it as much as humanly possible for the legal case. But that's not the argument
That number came from Google in court and wasn’t redacted.
> Apple makes more in mobile from Google than google makes from Android more than likely.
Oh, I'm absolutely sure that's the case. But basically every business on earth is less profitable than the iPhone. Are you saying that every other product is a miserable failure due to that?
Note they're totally different businesses. Apple primarily sells premium hardware, Google primarily licenses an OS to other phone manufacturers.
> Amazon was a low margin retail company and was spending billions on infrastructure.
So? Your argument is that Android is some kind of a product failure because it "only" made $26 billion in profit in its first six years. But what you're ignoring is that that is an absurd level of success. It's 8 times all of Amazon in the timeframe. What Amazon product had that kind of a growth curve from zero, ever? I would bet literally nothing.
If you applied this logic consistently, you should be ripping into Amazon's decades-long failure at creating a hit product. But instead you're making excuses about "low margins".
> Has Apple or any other BigTech company had to pay a direct competitor for placement?
Yes, like all the time? E.g. I'm sure that all of Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have bought ads on Google and YouTube. It's not some kind of indication of business failure on their part [0]; they've determined that those ads have a positive ROI.
[0] Though obviously Amazon's search engine did fail before being killed, like so many other Amazon products.
> That number came from Google in court and wasn’t redacted.
Ok, I'll stand corrected then. But I still have no idea of anyone could argue that's a failure.
> Note they're totally different businesses. Apple primarily sells premium hardware, Google primarily licenses an OS to other phone manufacturers.
Microsoft licenses Windows to other PC manufacturers, the PC market was much smaller than mobile even back then, do you think they only made $26 billion in profit over the time period licensing Windows? In hindsight, “missing mobile” was the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft. If you were a company right now, would you rather be “Android, Inc” or “Windows, Inc”?
> Yes, like all the time? E.g. I'm sure that all of Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have bought ads on Google and YouTube. It's not some kind of indication of business failure on their part [0]; they've determined that those ads have a positive ROI.
Do you think either spends anywhere near the amount?
> do you think they only made $26 billion in profit over the time period licensing Windows
Windows was at that point a 25 year old business, not one starting from zero. Why in the world would they have the same profit in that time period? Windows absolutely did not make $26 billion in the first 6 years of its life. Does that make Windows a failure?
I have no idea of whether Windows is more profitable than Android right now. You don't either. But both are clearly incredibly successful products.
Again: what product that successful has Amazon ever launched? Just a single example of something that made $26 billion of profit in its first 6 years. Should be easy to find, given Amazon has probably launched thousands of products, many in extremely lucrative high margin areas. And when you fail to name one, maybe consider that your theories on how good Amazon is at creating projects and how bad Google is might not be entirely correct?
> Do you think either spends anywhere near the amount?
Of course not. Why does that matter? Positive ROI is positive ROI.
> Windows was at that point a 25 year old business, not one starting from zero. Why in the world would they have the same profit in that time period? Windows absolutely did not make $26 billion in the first 6 years of its life. Does that make Windows a failure?
6 years in the life of Windows , there was nowhere near the number of PCs being sold every year as Android devices.
But I can guarantee you that even from the day that Microsoft license the first version of DOS to IBM that it made more per license sold than Google makes from each Android sold.
> Again: what product that successful has Amazon ever launched?
I see that you refuse to compare Android to its most realistic counterpart - Apple.
The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and even the Apple Watch (Cook said that Apple Watch revenues exceeded iPod revenue a couple of years ago) were all more successful in the first 6 years.
The entire point is that Google hasn’t been able to diversify at all *profitably”.
> I see that you refuse to compare Android to its most realistic counterpart - Apple.
Uh, what? Of course the iPhone is more profitable than Android, and I have already said so in this discussion. If you think that a product needs to reach iPhone numbers to count as successful, I really don't know what to say.
But I note that you are indeed incapable of naming a single Amazon product that was as successful as Android, while still maintaining that Android was somehow a commercial disappointment, while Amazon is a success story. You really don't see the disconnect?
> Microsoft went from “Windows Everywhere” and selling boxed software to cloud, cross platform development, Office365 subscriptions and Office working everywhere, embracing open source to the point where even SQL Server runs on Linux, Azure and gaming,
With the side effect that anyone that cares about their career is in a position on the org chart somehow related to Azure, and the current teams taking care of Windows UI frameworks seem filled with interns and contractors, without any background on Windows tooling history, and our expectations of what they should deliver.
I don't dispute that but this particular conversation was about who creates more and who shutters more and I don't think Microsoft is a good counterexample to Google. It has created some things, it has shuttered some things, but mostly things have stayed the same, same as Google. Apple is probably the one that has created the most lasting things and continues to release new lines of products and services. Nearly everything that has launched has had lasting iterations (except the original HomePod which is a tragedy).
Microsoft's Gaming and Cloud 'verticals' have not 'been around for ages' (or maybe I'm just older). They're a relatively new* creation of Microsoft which actually do well. Now, we could say Gaming is as old as Google, so that's a wash. But Google should never have been so far behind in Cloud. It should be their native arena! It's a huge loss, I suspect thanks to internal politics.
* Gorillas.BAS and Microsoft Flight Simulator aside.
** There's the Dynamics line, which I don't think really counts under 'office' given its complexity.
Xbox launched in 2001. I would call that "ages" personally. Cloud is newer I agree.
>But Google should have never been so far behind in Cloud.
I emphatically agree. Google had kick ass infrastructure way before most players and squandered it on internal use only. I think it's one of the biggest blunders in its history and shows the lack of vision in places.
As a standard disclaimer: I work at AWS in Professional Services. What I’m not going to do is criticize GCP. First it would be gouache to criticize a competitor and second I’ve never had any interaction with GCP as a user either personally or professionally. I have had experience with both AWS and Microsoft both from an implementation/hands on keyboard developer and from a more strategic business standpoint as a dev lead (Microsoft) and cloud architect (AWS) sitting in a room with CxOs dealing with vendor relationships working at startups.
That being said, despite the old wives tale that AWS came about because Amazon decided to sell its excess capacity, AWS was started as a separate initiative with completely different infrastructure when Amazon wanted to enter a separate vertical. It was led by Jassy (not technically from a business development standpoint) - a sales guy who looked at the market and went after a need (I refuse to say by “Working Backwards”). Every initiative that Amazon and AWS has starts with the business case, six pagers, PRFAQ’s etc with product managers and program managers involved. I even had to do a couple to get “funding” to spend time on a couple of features to a popular company sponsored open source solution I wanted to work on.
Being successful in the cloud is all about building relationships, knowing how to meet large organizations where they are, not being stuck on “the one true way”, developing and grooming a network of “partners”, etc. It’s very high touch. Microsoft has been doing that since the 80s and AWS had first mover advantage.
I won’t speak to GCP in particular. But none of the above characteristics is part of Google’s DNA.
That was sort of my point. Microsoft _used_ to throw a lot more stuff at the wall and see what sticks (I am talking about 10-20 years ago). These days it seems like the effort is much more concentrated with buy-in from the whole organisation (VS Code, .net core, WSL, Azure) and users can therefore put more trust in the company to continue investing into an endeavour.
(obviously there are still exceptions to this, I have lost count on the number of desktop UI frameworks Microsoft has developed in the last 15 years...)
