Google Has Made $31bn from Android

Information raised as part of an ongoing legal case between Oracle and Google shows the search firm compensated Apple to the tune of $1 billion in 2014. Annette Hurst, the Oracle attorney who revealed the details of the Google / Apple agreement, said that pretrial a Google witness revealed that “at one point in time the revenue share was 34 percent”.

“It’s a very lucrative business to be the browser of choice on a device or the search engine on a device”, Chris Green, a technology analyst at consultancy firm Lewis, told the BBC. Even though iOS is nowhere near Android’s percentage (13.9 percent vs 82.8 percent), Apple has seen a growth of more than 2 percent from the previous quarter, while Google lost 2 percent.

Oracle is accusing Google of using its Java software without paying for it to develop Android.

At the end of the day, we as consumers don’t really need to care about how much Google is making from Android, just as long as they continue to support and innovate with the OS.

Google’s Android operating system which powers the majority of the world’s smartphone and tablets, accounts for nearly 83 percent of the market, whilst iOS has around 14 percent. “Look at the extraordinary magnitude of commerciality here”, Oracle’s attorney had said last week while disclosing Android’s revenue and profit. The case has its origins all the way back in 2010, when Oracle claimed the search giant violated its copyright by using Java APIs in Android. Google filed another request to have the transcript sealed and redacted, and Apple also reportedly requested the same in a separate filing. Google said it would be hard for the company to negotiate similar deals in the future if the terms of its deal with Apple were to be public knowledge. Neither Google or Apple have officially comments on details emanating from the lawsuit thus far.