I was a big fan of Android, but since I got the iPhone 6 plus with the latest iOS updates, I switched to Apple.  Many have done the same.  In the US, Android has been losing market share and is now tied with Apple. The reason for this market share loss is that Google is spreading itself too thin. On Android they are losing their grip. There are too many forks such as the Xiaomi, Amazon, Samsung versions that are not controlled by Google. This translates to stock value.  If you see how stock analysts value Google and Apple stocks, around 90% of the value of Apple ($650bn) is due to iOS while around 8% of the value of Google ($450bn) is due to Android. And this is the case even though outside the US Android has 82% market share. But while Android has 81% smartphone market share Apple with less than 14% has over 80% of the global smartphone market profits. This happens because if you are a $650bn company focused on one product you are likely to beat a $450bn multiproduct company. And then there is the other vulnerability of Google which is ads. Search related ads are around 80% of the value of Google. Ads are to Google what iOS is to Apple. But in ads Google is under attack from another company: Facebook. Facebook is a $260bn ads only company that does not allow Google to crawl it. For Google everything that goes on at Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp is a black hole. But Facebook has found another way to make ads work that is not search based but instead it is contextual to whatever you are doing on Facebook. And these ads are extremely well targeted. Facebook allows advertisers to use key demographics such as geography, gender, age, income, occupation, something that Google cannot do. Moreover Facebook is way ahead of Google in mobile advertising and the fight against ad blockers. A lot of Facebook revenues comes from promoting apps and other activities that are not tackled by Google. So Google is in a bind. On its core product it has a fast growing rival, Facebook, and on its popular yet not so money making product, Android it is going against a single minded $650bn company with the biggest pile of cash in the world. And on top of that Google is doing many other projects, loon, driverless cars, life sciences, building fiber optic networks, building wifi routers, building thermostats and smoke alarms, and the whole Alphabet. My worry about Google is that a company that tries to do everything, will lose out to highly focused rivals like Apple and Facebook.  Here’s a list of some of the Google products and you will see that it’s huge even if it does not include hardware and many acquisitions. What Google should do is stop being a Jack of all trades and focus on at most two areas: the first one is search+ads+Android+chrome+maps+gmail+photos which are all one ad supported eco system and the driverless cars which has the biggest potential to revolutionize transportation. All the other projects Google should spin off, close or sell.

My friends have a hard time to believe it now, but when the Argentine military murdered David Varsavsky (yes little David honors him) we fled the country. We fled to the USA, who thanks to the intervention of Senator Patrick Moynahan, gave us political asylum. So I was a refugee. We were refugees. And I am forever thankful to the USA for saving us. I am saying this now because when I see people in Germany being so kind and accepting of those fleeing Islamic State and Bashar Al Assad and those in the USA so reluctant to take them, it saddens me. It is contradictory to see the nation that was so welcoming to us, ignoring their reality. That their lives are now in danger unarguably has something to do with the poorly handled US intervention in the region. Refugees deserve our help. Refugees are not economic migrants. They are not escaping poverty. They are running for their lives. As we were. And what’s most important, as we saw in the Balkans and Lebanon, most refugees return home, horrible fighting grounds soon become tourist destinations. As Croatia or Lebanon now are.