Anyone who wonders why Google has poured so many resources into Android, Google Fiber and Motorola should understand that the company doesn’t plan to make money by selling smartphones or by being an ISP. Instead, Google’s game plan is to boost traffic to its hugely profitable websites and raise the rates that it can charge advertisers. A new chart from Asymco’s Horace Dediu, posted below, shows that Google websites such as YouTube, Google Maps and plain old search remain as vital as ever to Google’s success as a company, with both its websites and network websites combining for more than $10 billion in revenues.
Needless to say, this is why many analysts have depicted Samsung’s dominance of the Android smartphone industry and third-party Android software overlays such as Facebook Home as potential threats to Google, since they take the Android platform out of Google’s control and redirect traffic to their own properties instead.
