<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>You understandably suffer from the mistaken impression that Android is &apos;free.&apos; when the reality is that the kernel is &apos;free&apos; but the &apos;Apps&apos; which most phones have (mail, dialer, appstore, browser, maps, etc etc) are actually licensed for actual cash. It&apos;s not entirely clear how much that costs (and it benefits Google for that not to be clear).&lt;p&gt;In terms of business advantage, Android seems to me to be fairly unique. Google created a lower barrier to entry into the &apos;smartphone&apos; market than either Apple, Microsoft, or RIM. Folks who took advantage of that were people early on were people who had the most to gain (low end carriers like T-mobile, Chinese ODMs who wanted to move up the value chain like HTC). They captured a large (if somewhat chaotic) developer market by making much of the source code for the system available for download, and they did create the ability for an individual to create a nearly complete  phone &apos;stack&apos; for certain types of hardware.&lt;p&gt;The established players greatly underestimated the impact of capturing the &apos;hobbiest&apos; phone market. (Much like the established data processing players missed completely the impact of the hobbiest computer market).&lt;p&gt;Google generates anywhere from two to three billion dollars &lt;i&gt;a quarter&lt;/i&gt; in free cash flow, which accounts for any and all R&amp;#38;D investment in Android, so its a classic example of being able to take huge profits from your cash-cow market (Search advertising) and disrupt a different market (smartphones) which is the fastest growing channel for advertising (Mobile ads).&lt;p&gt;Not to mention that Google probably has a better network than any phone carrier today, and they have a voice calling product (Google Voice), its entirely possible at some point for them to create a &apos;phone&apos; system based entirely on WiFi (like, maybe something with this new whitespace bandwidth that is available or a bunch of hotspots) which gives you a device which can replace AT&amp;#38;T or Vodaphone or whomever.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately Google understands that nobody bought a smart phone because they &apos;wanted to be a customer of AT&amp;#38;T&apos;, rather they bought it because as a tool it made them more productive. If Google can back into owning that whole stack then their company becomes just that much more valuable.&lt;p&gt;Worth throwing a bit of pocket change at is it not?</text><parent_chain><item><author>alain94040</author><text>Except I don&apos;t believe in a free lunch.&lt;p&gt;Explain to me again, slowly. Apple is spending $1B in R&amp;#38;D to design the iPhone. Google is spending the same amount to design Android. Where is this money coming from and is it a sustainable investment from Google?</text></item><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>Oft-quoted: &quot;Android May Be the Greatest Legal Destruction of Wealth in History&quot;&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s actually a transfer of wealth from the coffers of Apple, RIM and MS to mostly developing-nation consumers who can now afford the same advanced phones as people in developed countries. The trio is doing everything in their power to kill Android, but I do hope it survives.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Apple deals massive patent blow to HTC, Android in serious trouble</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/apple-deals-massive-patent-blow-to-htc-android-in-serious-trouble/13714</url><text></text></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Daniel14</author><text>Android pays for itself, in lots of different ways, among them and by far most importantly: Being the default search provider on 550k additional phones/day. That&apos;s worth a billion $ to Google any day.</text><parent_chain><item><author>alain94040</author><text>Except I don&apos;t believe in a free lunch.&lt;p&gt;Explain to me again, slowly. Apple is spending $1B in R&amp;#38;D to design the iPhone. Google is spending the same amount to design Android. Where is this money coming from and is it a sustainable investment from Google?</text></item><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>Oft-quoted: &quot;Android May Be the Greatest Legal Destruction of Wealth in History&quot;&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s actually a transfer of wealth from the coffers of Apple, RIM and MS to mostly developing-nation consumers who can now afford the same advanced phones as people in developed countries. The trio is doing everything in their power to kill Android, but I do hope it survives.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Apple deals massive patent blow to HTC, Android in serious trouble</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/apple-deals-massive-patent-blow-to-htc-android-in-serious-trouble/13714</url><text></text></story>