| Lucrative Android Relationship ??? “It's clear the search giant is now willing to shelve their previous principles in order to protect their lucrative Android relationship with Verizon.”
Please excuse my noobiness, but could you spell this out?
I've always presumed that Google recognized that they were proxy combatants against Apple to help Verizon win the larger war of resisting the smartphone revolution — keeping any manufacturer or software shop or anybody else besides the carrier from gaining too much power — and specifically the carriers' delay-to-death a net-neutral future where carriers would be dumb pipes that would work ever so much better than their little fiefdoms that are optimized for nickel-and-dollaring us to death.
Google's first choice would be that All traffic went thru Google OS, where they could price ads as high as they wanted because there'd be no alternative. They're working on that. Second choice is that Apple doesn't get there, as it appeared they might, and Google has hit a milestone on that. Also important is that not all the traffic goes thru Verizon or AT&T, since then the carriers would monetize all the traffic to their tastes. That's a bit more out of Google's hands, so they are working on several fronts.
As of yet, the market has evolved only enough for Google to collect ordinary high profits, not yet to start collecting monopoly rents. If they push their luck the carriers will all promote WinPhone7 and Bing (as AT&T has already signaled), as the carriers have always played the different manufacturers against one another. Just now, they have to consider the OS/software stack, too.
So I've thought Google was still in Phase II of their plan: that they would keep all the US carriers within neat little boundaries, so that the carriers couldn't treat Google the way that the cable companies treat the content providers (as either carrion, to be bought for pennies, or as easy target for leeching off by threatening to take Disney or Fox off the air right before Superbowl, etc.). Google needs the wireless companies to not get too big/uppity, which is why they made their foray into buying spectrum. Shot across the bow and all that, although the carriers seemingly have made it clear that nobody is gonna mess with their ownership of the US airwaves. |
