The ongoing court case between Google and Epic Games, the publisher of Fortnite, has brought to light how much the Mountain View giant earns from the Google Play Store.
The numbers are huge and you have to remember that when Google launched the Android Market in 2008, they only wanted to collect a small percentage just to cover administrative and billing costs.
As it turned out, Google at that time did not plan to manage the Android Market as a source of profit, but rather kept 5% as a revenue share, while 25% went to operators and 30% to developers.
Over the years, the Google Play Store has become an essential part of the Android experience, but it seems that not even Google expected it to become so important in the early days of its mobile system.
Google didn’t expect to make so much money from its Android app store
Among other things, the lawsuit between Epic and Google also brought newer data to light. In 2020, the Play Store recorded an operating margin of 65%, representing operating profit of up to $4.4 billion in the first half of 2020, and this value increased by 33% compared to the first half of 2019.
The fact that Google originally had no intention of profiting from the Android Market shows that even the company itself underestimated the potential of Android and its store and probably did not expect it to become what it is today .
The future of the Google Play Store will depend on the outcome of the lawsuit against Epic Games, which sued Google in 2020 after a dispute over commissions on in-app purchases, claiming that the Play Store constituted an illegal monopoly.
You might be interested in: Free apps and games or on sale available in the Play Store from today, November 15th
