Over the previous few weeks, we’ve been following the continuing Google antitrust lawsuit. Lots of the revelations so far have been attention-grabbing and even eyebrow-raising however nonetheless very business-focused.

Yesterday, nonetheless, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took to the stand (through The Verge). Throughout his testimony, Pichai revealed a tidbit on how Google operates that offers a greater look backstage and will assist clarify customers’ frustration with Android telephones not seeing safety updates. In keeping with Pichai, Google financially incentivizes OEMs to replace their telephones. Corporations that preserve telephones present with the newest safety patches see a better income share from Google companies than those who don’t.

In different phrases, the amount of cash an OEM makes from you utilizing Google merchandise on its machine is correlated to how usually it retains that machine updated with safety patches. This implies Google deliberately strongarms OEMs to be higher about updating telephones, which is one thing we didn’t know earlier than. We knew that Google mandates two years of updates for any Android telephone and strongly encourages extra prolonged help than that, however we didn’t notice there have been monetary incentives concerned.

Pichai additionally stated that sure OEMs will neglect to replace telephones even with the understanding that it’ll trigger them to lose out on potential earnings. “Extra effort goes into growing the subsequent model, and updates are pricey,” Pichai stated, “so generally [OEMs] make tradeoffs.”

This revelation makes us scratch our heads after we take into consideration corporations like Sony, Motorola, OnePlus, and others that ship solely the naked minimal of updates to a few of their telephones. So far as we are able to inform, that’s cash left on the desk. Nonetheless, the consumer base is likely to be sufficiently small that the amount of cash the corporate would wish to spend to maintain the telephone up to date is larger than the potential income share the OEM might earn from Google. If that’s the case, then not updating the telephone is a straightforward choice.

Take into consideration this data subsequent time you marvel why your Android telephone is months behind on the newest safety patch.