The outside world has been paying attention to the progress of Google’s antitrust lawsuit in recent weeks, and much of the information currently disclosed mainly involves commercial aspects.
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However, yesterday Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified in court. In his testimony, Sundar Pichai revealed a detail about the way Google operates that may help explain why some Android phones are not updated with security patches. According to Sundar Pichai, Google uses financial incentives to get OEMs to update their phones. Manufacturers that promptly provide the latest security patches to their phones receive a higher share of revenue from Google services, while those that do not do the opposite.
In other words, the money OEMs make from Google products on their devices is tied to how often they update security patches for the devices. This means that Google is deliberately pressuring OEMs to update their phones better and faster. We had previously known that Google mandated that any Android phone provide updates for two years and strongly recommended support beyond that period, but had no idea there were financial incentives involved.
Sundar Pichai also said that some OEMs will not update their phones even if they understand that they will lose potential revenue by not updating their phones. “It takes a lot of effort to develop a version, and updates are very expensive, so sometimes (OEMs) make trade-offs,” Pichai said.
Some manufacturers only provide minimal updates for some phones, which is equivalent to giving up some revenue from Google. However, their user base may be small enough that the money it would cost the company to keep the phones updated is greater than the potential revenue share they might receive from Google.
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