56 Distribute and Be Damned
that market capitalisation had risen to $397 billion.
62
The secret to its
remarkable financial success is extremely simple: advertising. In 2001,
Google’s advertising revenue amounted to some $70 million; by 2010,
that figure had risen to $28.24 billion, and in 2017 it was $95.38 billion.
63
The company’s total revenues in 2017 – from sales of devices
and other services in addition to advertising – were $110.9 billion. The
message is clear: without advertising, Google would be an impressive
company of the size of Adobe or Chanel (which finally hit the $10 billion revenue mark in 2018, some 135 years after its formation); with
advertising, it is one of the largest companies in the world. Its growth
has historically been driven by search (between 2010 and early 2018,
Google accounted for between 86 and 90 per cent of searches across
the globe), supplemented in recent years by the rise of Android. Indeed,
so important has Android become in terms of monopolising the mobile
market that, in July 2018, it was hit with a record €4.34bn fine (exceeding the previous record €2.42bn fine it received for perceived abuse of its
dominant position in the search market in 2017). When Page and Brin
founded Google, they famously included the motto “Don’t be evil” as a
reminder not to repeat the abuses of Microsoft in the nineties. As a subsidiary of Alphabet, that motto was quietly removed from the company’s
code of conduct in May 2018,
64
although the warning signs had been
in place much earlier than that. In a widely cited article in InfoWorld
from March 2014 entitled “Google? Evil? You have no idea”, Robert
X. Cringely humorously outlined some of the ways in which the organisation’s plans for world domination were progressing in a manner that
made Microsoft appear the model of restraint, including financial transactions, shopping, and all forms of entertainment.
65
Since Cringely’s article, it is quite clear that Google’s plans for domination are not the same as reality: the company is as notorious for
not following through on technological innovations such as Jaiku and
Dodgeball (the latter eventually succeeding separately as Foursquare) as
it is for dominating the small number which it controls almost completely. For every Google search engine, Maps, or Android, there are
dozens of failed social media platforms or hardware non-starters. The
recent fine for Android, however, does offer some insight into how the
company has, in a few key areas, managed to achieve such complete
domination. Work on Android began in 2003, although it was following
the company’s buyout by Google in 2005 and the launch of the iPhone
and iOS that substantial transformations took place so that, by the time
the first public version was released on the HTC Dream in 2008, Steve
Jobs thoroughly believed that the company was evil, vowing to go “thermonuclear” on Google.
66
This rancour, which lasted at least until Jobs’s
death in 2011, erased the previous closeness between the two companies:
Stephen Levy even remarked that in Google’s early years, there was so
much similarity between the executive teams of both organisations that
that market capitalisation had risen to $397 billion.
62
The secret to its
remarkable financial success is extremely simple: advertising. In 2001,
Google’s advertising revenue amounted to some $70 million; by 2010,
that figure had risen to $28.24 billion, and in 2017 it was $95.38 billion.
63
The company’s total revenues in 2017 – from sales of devices
and other services in addition to advertising – were $110.9 billion. The
message is clear: without advertising, Google would be an impressive
company of the size of Adobe or Chanel (which finally hit the $10 billion revenue mark in 2018, some 135 years after its formation); with
advertising, it is one of the largest companies in the world. Its growth
has historically been driven by search (between 2010 and early 2018,
Google accounted for between 86 and 90 per cent of searches across
the globe), supplemented in recent years by the rise of Android. Indeed,
so important has Android become in terms of monopolising the mobile
market that, in July 2018, it was hit with a record €4.34bn fine (exceeding the previous record €2.42bn fine it received for perceived abuse of its
dominant position in the search market in 2017). When Page and Brin
founded Google, they famously included the motto “Don’t be evil” as a
reminder not to repeat the abuses of Microsoft in the nineties. As a subsidiary of Alphabet, that motto was quietly removed from the company’s
code of conduct in May 2018,
64
although the warning signs had been
in place much earlier than that. In a widely cited article in InfoWorld
from March 2014 entitled “Google? Evil? You have no idea”, Robert
X. Cringely humorously outlined some of the ways in which the organisation’s plans for world domination were progressing in a manner that
made Microsoft appear the model of restraint, including financial transactions, shopping, and all forms of entertainment.
65
Since Cringely’s article, it is quite clear that Google’s plans for domination are not the same as reality: the company is as notorious for
not following through on technological innovations such as Jaiku and
Dodgeball (the latter eventually succeeding separately as Foursquare) as
it is for dominating the small number which it controls almost completely. For every Google search engine, Maps, or Android, there are
dozens of failed social media platforms or hardware non-starters. The
recent fine for Android, however, does offer some insight into how the
company has, in a few key areas, managed to achieve such complete
domination. Work on Android began in 2003, although it was following
the company’s buyout by Google in 2005 and the launch of the iPhone
and iOS that substantial transformations took place so that, by the time
the first public version was released on the HTC Dream in 2008, Steve
Jobs thoroughly believed that the company was evil, vowing to go “thermonuclear” on Google.
66
This rancour, which lasted at least until Jobs’s
death in 2011, erased the previous closeness between the two companies:
Stephen Levy even remarked that in Google’s early years, there was so
much similarity between the executive teams of both organisations that