Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform

A very interesting piece of analysis by Kyle Baxter, and a timely reminder that Google’s motives need not be pure. There’s quite a lot that is not evil, but which is well inside the grey area.

This helps explain some puzzling moves by Google. For example, Android’s market may not be terrible in comparison to Apple’s App Store for paid applications just because Google hasn’t yet finished it; rather, discouraging paid applications on the Android platform is in Google’s interest. If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money from their applications? Advertising. And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob.