Google has made $31 billion off Android over the last decade

Considering how Google only paid somewhere around $50 million for Android back in 2005, I think it’s safe to say that it was a solid investment, but how solid? Google has never revealed how much money it makes from Android, but thanks to the company’s ongoing legal battle with Oracle, we now know that Android has generated $31 billion in revenue and $22 billion in profit for Google over the last decade. The information was acquired by Oracle’s lawyers through its legal battle with Google, and one of them was kind enough to release some of it for us.

So the news just broke that Google has generated a revenue of $31 billion and $22 billion in profit from the Android since it acquired the operating system back in 2005. This is incredible news, because the long-standing narrative was that Android wasn’t making very much money for the company. In fact, Google has a history of being harassed by Wall Street for throwing money at projects that, while interesting, aren’t very profitable. So while investors are cheering, why is Google sulking in the corner with its arms crossed? The reason is part and parcel with the way we found out about this $31 billion figure. Oracle currently has Google entrenched in an on-going legal battle. The case has its origins all the way back in 2010, when Oracle claimed the search giant violated its copyright by using Java APIs in Android. In 2014, the court ruled that API’s could, in fact, be copyrighted, and Google immediately escalated the case to the Supreme Court. This past summer, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling, and in many ways this looked like a killing blow for the Android owner’s side in the case, with Oracle pursuing damages of $1 billion.