Will Google Have to Lose Android?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 14, 9:40AM EDT

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A federal court decided that Google is a monopoly.
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) could spin out its Android smartphone operating system.
Also: Discover the next Nvidia.

Several media reports suggest the U.S. government has developed a plan to break up Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL). A federal court decided that Alphabet’s Google is a monopoly. The decision will be appealed, but the risk Alphabet will lose rests on its ability to argue that Google’s market share does not matter. That is a tough sell. Google dominates two large tech segments: search and operating systems. While Google dominates search with a market share of over 80%, Android has about 70% of OS installations worldwide, more than double Apple’s iOS.

According to The New York Times description of Justice Department deliberations, “They are discussing various proposals, including breaking off parts of Google, such as its Chrome browser or Android smartphone operating system, two of the people said.”

While the Android mobile operating system is not a large revenue producer, it does bring in some licensing revenue. Additionally, its Play Store competes with Apple’s App Store, another revenue source. Perhaps most importantly, Android includes Google products like Gmail and Search in its suite of products. That means that Android has Google’s major apps “preinstalled.”

The experts at Android Authority wrote, “Android organically drives users to many other Google services, including search, YouTube, and Gmail.” The loss of Android as part of Google’s ability to dominate the smartphone industry would disappear.

Alphabet has tried to expand Android’s footprint further by selling hardware. Its Pixel smartphones have just gotten an upgrade. The new Pixel 9 has four versions. One has a folding screen. It also has Google’s newest artificial intelligence features, including the Gemini AI assistant.

If the government is successful with an Alphabet breakup, a standalone Android company may be the most significant part of the process.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.