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Sean Hollister

Sean Hollister

Senior Editor

Senior Editor

    More From Sean Hollister

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Anybody know when Google suggested people change their phone every six months?

    I don’t remember hearing that, but Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein just asked Hiroshi Lockheimer, “True or false: people change their phones every six months?” Lockheimer said no, and Bornstein said, “So that statement we heard earlier in this courtroom: false?” and that didn’t make any sense to Lockheimer (who hasn’t been in the room) or me.

    Maybe I missed something. Google didn’t object, so perhaps it happened.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Hiroshi Lockheimer has taken the stand in Epic v. Google.

    We’re now hearing from Google’s leader of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, and other things — Hiroshi Lockheimer leads the platforms and ecosystems team, and he’s been one of the public faces of Android for many years. The Verge’s staff have often spotted him at events.

    He says Jamie Rosenberg, a former head of Google Play who took the stand yesterday, reported to him.

    Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    “So bottom line is that we’re protecting already at risk Play revenue at the cost of YouTube opportunity cost and growth...”

    Semi-privately, Chu believed it was bad for YouTube to switch to Google Play Billing, despite being fair.

    “That revenue is at risk already... but the opportunity costs for Youtube to move to Play is that instead of rolling out new features and whatnot, YouTube is spending time migrating to Play,” he told attorneys in the 2022 video deposition.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Incredibly, Chu appears to have resisted Google Play Billing when he started working for YouTube.

    We saw earlier in the trial that YouTube long resisted switching to Google Play Billing, which seemed... mighty convenient for the Google-owned property when Google pushes other developers that way.

    Now, we’re seeing that original Android app store boss Eric Chu helped defend that decision — for a time — when he joined YouTube in 2018.

    “Data integration will significantly limit YouTube’s ability to innovate — significant eng efforts at the expense of moving our paid business forward,” he wrote. Later, in 2020, he suggested that YouTube would need to do so to achieve fairness for all developers, both first party and third party, but was still worried about the costs.

    His YouTube comments are from a January 2022 deposition, not the original 2021 one I mentioned earlier.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Two more Googlers who spoke out against Google keeping a percentage:

    A Google developer advocate, Reto Maier, in July 2009:

    I was wondering why we made this change? I’m worried that I can no longer say ‘Google doesn’t take a cut, we just cover our transaction costs’. Why not give developers more and pressure carriers to reduce the cut?

    I missed who wrote this one, apologies:

    We have previously said that we don’t make money from Market, we are now lying. Let me repeat that, we are now lying to our developers by not making this change public (for 6 months now!)

    Google’s public blog post in October 2008 introducing the Android Market explicitly stated that “Google does not take a percentage.” I’m not completely clear if Google was already taking 5 percent at that time.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    “Things could get ugly once people find out.”

    Rubin’s 70/30 rev share decree came as a surprise — because it was already sharing 95 percent in some regions.

    “As requested (re Eric Chu) we have changed the default developer revenue share from 95% to 70%. This is live in production now,” reads a June 2009 email.

    Some employees thought Google was Being Evil (back when its motto was Don’t Be Evil) and protested the decision in internal emails. (That’s two bingo card stamps right now, if you’re keeping track.)

    Here’s how Android engineer, Jean-Baptiste Queru, reacted in an email:

    As an outside developer, I’d mostly think “evil”. It’s hard to justify the storyline that we’re trying to change the mobile industry if the reality is that the mobile industry is changing us. I hope that Google is ready to defend that new position in public as things could get ugly once people find out.”

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Andy Rubin decreed that Google would keep 30 percent of revenue for Android phones sold outside carriers.

    We just saw an 2009 email where Android co-founder Andy Rubin told early app store boss Eric Chu that Google wouldn’t just keep a “processing fee” when carriers weren’t part of the equation — it would keep the extra 25 percent it was promising to carriers, too.

    It’s not a discussion between Rubin and Chu, at least not in this part of the email thread. Chu asks, and Rubin replies: “70/30 worldwide.”

    Rubin makes it even clearer in another equally blunt email:

    70% to developers

    30% to Google

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    Google originally gave carriers 25 percent because it was a very different time.

    Says Chu, the original Android app store boss:

    Back then, many of the major carriers had their own stores. They get to promote, and they also make money off of the store — of their store, I should say. And so this is to try to give them an alternative that allowed them to monetize even with Android Market — to convince them to adopt a new market.

    The carriers would compete with Android Market?

    “That was part of the design. It has always ben an intention, as part of Android, to enable other stores” and other ways to download apps, he testified.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    We’re going old-school — back when Google promised the Android app store would not be “a profit center.”

    Chu says the original Android Market rev share was 70/25/5: “70 percent to developers, 25 percent to carriers, and Google kept 5 percent.”

    In an FAQ he drafted for the Android Market in 2008, he wrote “Google will not be operating the Android Market as a profit center” and “Google will collect a small charge to cover costs of handling and billing.”

    We learned earlier today that, in 2020, Google internally claimed that Google Play had become one of the most profitable businesses in the world and key to Android P&L — literally a profit center for Google.

    In a blog post he drafted that year, he wrote: “Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees — nothing goes to Google.” But according to an email we just saw, Google decided it should take 5 percent for processing fees.

    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    It’s not Hiroshi.

    We’re back from lunch, and instead of hearing from Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer next, Epic is playing a December 2021 video deposition from Eric Chu, a former Google head of Android ecosystem who ran the Android Market before it became Google Play. He was succeeded by Jamie Rosenberg, who we heard from the other day.

    He left Google for Meta / Facebook.

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