That's pretty difficult to measure, but I think it's pretty difficult to argue that it hasn't made them money.
That is to say, it's hard to even wrap my head around how Google has been able to leverage Android to influence the development of mobile as a platform, or the information they've been able to collect from 3 billion Android devices. So it's hard for me to guess how much money Android helped Google to earn.
But it takes ten seconds of back of the envelope math to determine that Android makes money for Google. Google pays $8-12 billion per year to be the default iOS search engine in 2019[2]. I think it's safe to say that Android is worth at least that much to Google.
It's not quite that simple. How much do they pay to the carriers to be the default search engine on their Android phones?
The risk remains that Apple creates its own search engine and cuts Google off from even being allowed to be the default, which was the risk that Google originally tried to fight with Android vs. Microsoft, but that hasn't materialized yet.
That is to say, it's hard to even wrap my head around how Google has been able to leverage Android to influence the development of mobile as a platform, or the information they've been able to collect from 3 billion Android devices. So it's hard for me to guess how much money Android helped Google to earn.
But it takes ten seconds of back of the envelope math to determine that Android makes money for Google. Google pays $8-12 billion per year to be the default iOS search engine in 2019[2]. I think it's safe to say that Android is worth at least that much to Google.