How Much Is Android Worth To Google?

Search Engine Land's +Danny Sullivan is duking it out with +The Guardian today about the worth of Android. The Guardian parsed through some court documents in the ongoing Oracle v. Google case and came out claiming that, since 2008, Android has only generated $550 million for Google.


Danny Sullivan says, not so fast.


He looked into the same documents and suggests that The Guardian jumped the gun. Mr. Sullivan's point is that the $550 million figure is based on what the patents themselves are worth, NOT how much revenue Google has generated from them.


So how much does Danny Sullivan think Google has generated from Android? "We won’t know until the expert’s report is released." Until then, all we have are guesses and estimates based on incomplete data.


 For those of you not in the know, Android operating system is built on the Java programming language. Oracle owns the rights to Java. Oracle is suing Google for relying on their patents without paying royalties.


As a sidenote, Java was created by Sun Microsystems. The company and all its patents were then bought by Oracle. When Android was first released, the Sun Microsystems CEO came out praising the operating system for choosing Java.