I read with great interest a blog post by Tim Bajarin the other day talking about the potential collision course between Apple, Microsoft and Google. While I found the article interesting and insightful, I think most people are assuming that Google wants to get into more markets than Google may actually be interested in. I want to suggest that perhaps some of Google's products and services are not designed to be direct profit centers, but instead exist to protect their core business, which we all know is search and Ads (or as I mentioned in another article, trust).
I believe Google has been and will continue to be focused on its primary mission, to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Part of that universality requires openness and availability of technology, and making an open-source browser and operating system (a la Chrome) work incredibly well on laptop/tablet devices serves that mission. So does Android on ultra-portable devices like phones and other embedded devices that should be connected to a cloud. All of those devices provide less expensive access to the Internet and build brand loyalty in such a way that the users of those devices may be inclined to use Google services and hence bring more revenue to Google.
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