Don't Be Evil Stupid

I’m not sure shocking is the right word, but it sure is some kind of weird about Google:

Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, if figures provided by the search giant as part of a settlement offer with Oracle ahead of an expected patent and copyright infringement trial are an accurate guide.

Kinda makes that $12.5 billion acquisition of flailing handset maker Motorola harder to understand. And then there’s the next graf:

The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period.

Android has Apple so pissed off at Google, that Apple is moving away from Google Maps for iOS with its own product, and is moving away from Google Search with Siri. Whatever the result of Apple’s patent war, it’s clear that Google’s future with iOS devices is bleak — and it didn’t have to be that way.

It’s as if, a dozen years ago, Microsoft had gone head-to-head with Dell to sell beige box PCs.