[xiaoma]

Google's brand has plummeted since the era of blogger/google reader/google talk, etc.

It's just that they have powerful monopolies that fund pretty much anything they want to do and there are powerful network/lock-in effects for email, documents, calendars, chat, mobile app sales, etc and even YouTube.

You're free to join a different chat network but none of your friends are there. You can change to another calendar provider but you'll still have on in gmail and people will share things to it. You can upload your video to Vimeo, but it won't have anywhere near the ability to attract traffic as it would on YouTube and it probably won't do as well in search results. Feel free to write an app for non-Google Android users, but not many people will buy it or even encounter it (unless you're in a market like China and are on a local monopoly's platform).

Google has hurt their brand. They're just not that dependent on people liking them anymore. In a lot of ways it's like Microsoft was 20 years ago.

[automatwon]

Feel free to write an app for non-Google Android users, but not many people will buy it or even encounter it

iOS apps generate more revenue than Android

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-revenue-per-u...

[jeeva]

> non-Google Android users

I suspect he means Android-without-Play-store, rather than phone-without-Android.