Google's second quarter 2015 financials →

Janko Roettgers for Variety:

What’s more, the YouTube-owned video service also seems to be growing eyeballs, despite increased competition from Facebook. “Growth in watch time on YouTube has accelerated,” said Porat, adding that global watch time is up 60 percent year-over-year, with mobile watch time more than double from what it was a year ago.

Porat’s remarks got seconded by Google’s chief business officer Omid Kordestani, who called YouTube’s watch time growth “the fastest we’ve seen in a couple of years”. A year ago, YouTube’s watch time had accelerated by 50 percent year-over-year, according to a Google spokesperson.

Kordestani also said that the average mobile viewing session on YouTube now lasts more than 40 minutes, and added that mobile viewing alone attracts more 18-49 year-olds in the U.S. than any cable network. The number of channels than earn a six-figure income on YouTube is up 50 percent year-over-year, according to Kordestani.

Improved mobile performance clearly spells good news for the company. Wall Street seemingly agreed, with shares spiking 11% in after-hours trading, causing Google to again overtake Microsoft as the second most valuable company on earth.

Also interesting from these financial results:

The logic behind multiple Nexus phones finally starts to make sense (for me at least) →

Sam Byford for The Verge:

This year, we may see a first for Google’s line of Nexus Android phones: a Chinese manufacturer. The Information reports that Huawei is in line to produce the device, which is said to be planned for fall. It’s not the first we’ve heard of the possibility; IBT said last month that the Huawei Nexus phone was coming, citing an employee at the company’s UK branch, while Android Police published a tentative rumor in May suggesting that there would be two Nexus phones this year — a 5.7-inch Huawei device and a 5.2-inch phone from LG.

Every time the rumor of multiple Nexus phones in 2015 has come up, I've been very dismissive of it, simply because I failed to see a reason why Google would bother releasing two 5-inch Nexus phones at the same time. It's not like they've mastered or even achieved basic competency at releasing a single model globally in meaningful quantities as yet 1.

With Huawei's rumored model supposedly only a half inch or so bigger than the more likely (to me) LG Nexus phone, I could never reconcile why there'd be more than one new model.

The relationship between Google and Huawei could be mutually beneficial beyond the phone’s co-development. The Information claims that talks are in progress for Huawei to help Google bring a mobile app store to China, where government regulations have restricted the search giant from conducting much business of note.

Now this is interesting, and would clearly justify an additional Nexus device.

Furthermore, upon thinking further on my words above about Google's continued inability to launch Nexus phones at any meaningful scale, another reason for multiple Nexus phones becomes clear, especially when combined with comments by Patrick Pichette (the company's then CFO) earlier this year:

“While the Nexus 6 was well received as a new phone, we had real issues and were unable to secure sufficient inventory to meet the demand that we had forecasted.”

Having multiple manufacturers create Nexus phones would allow Google to hedge in the event a partner is unable to deliver the requisite Nexus supply for whatever reason (whether nefarious or not), and hopefully put the company in a better position supply-wise on launch day.

It could very well be that there's fire with this smoke after all.


  1. Google have had some success here. Certainly 2013's Nexus 5 and 7 launches were largely very successful with regards to plentiful supply and global availability. But unfortunately, these launches have proved to be an exception rather than the rule, as 2014's Nexus 6 and Nexus Player launches in particular were straight back to the dark days.

Lots of permission changes in Android M Preview 2

Android M Preview 2 released today, and the bulk of the changes in this release are related to the new opt-in permission system.

I wonder if we can extrapolate from this that the permission changes only started to be worked on in earnest somewhat late in M's development? All will be revealed in this regard when M's source code publicly releases and we can snoop on the code commits.

One particularly noteworthy change:

Apps included in the system image are no longer granted dangerous permissions automatically. All apps should check for and request permissions at runtime.

This is very interesting. Currently if Google Play Services requires a new permission, it will be auto-updated without a user actually granting access to that new permission.

I wondered how Google would handle the new opt-in permission system with their own pre-installed apps, given as a general rule, Google sure does like itself some data.

Google have seemingly opted to play on the same field as everyone else in this regard, which is terrific news.

And even better news is that the pre-installed bloatware that comes on 99% of today's Android devices will not automatically have access to your sensitive data (assuming device manufacturers don't bypass this themselves of course).

New Yorker: Apple versus Google →

Om Malik:

Still, one can’t help but wonder whether Apple backed into their position on privacy. As a cynic, I don’t think that Apple truly has a genuinely profound concern for the issue. Very little in their past would suggest that this is something they care about to the core. They’re a company that has always understood hardware, not software, and they’re fumbling as software becomes something defined by data and cloud and constant connectivity. Google’s view is a post-Internet ideology, and Apple, confused and slightly threatened, is falling back on an argument about privacy.

I personally have a lot of time for Apple seemingly taking a strong stand for user privacy. But I do agree that their position feels somewhat convenient given they still seem outmatched compared to Google when it comes to services, data crunching and the like.

And I also agree there's every chance Apple will have to walk their position back to some degree at some point (likely as a fully anonymized and opt-in way).