[masklinn]

> Those were just some examples. My biggest point was the freedom of phone hardware and carrier.

I'm happy to report my iphone is entirely free from carriers control.

> Also, from everything I've read, AT&T has never supported tethering

I'm not in the US and not on AT&T, so in my world I have tethering, Android handsets are 6+ months later and most countries can't even buy apps on the Android market, let alone make them.

> Google Maps doesn't have Navigation on the iPhone.

Erm... yeah? It's a google soft...

[vetinari]

> I'm happy to report my iphone is entirely free from carriers control.

Then you are mistaken. All settings under "carrier profile" (for example, enable tethering is there) cannot be set by you, the owner. They can be only imported using settings file signed by the carrier.

> Erm... yeah? It's a google soft...

If you were paying attention, exclusive features for own products is Apple tactics, not Googles. Actually, there were people asking why Google bothers with Maps and Voice for iPhone (i.e. why it is helping iPhone at expense of Android). If you know the answer why, you already know why Google doesn't play platform favorites.

[masklinn]

> If you were paying attention, exclusive features for own products is Apple tactics, not Googles.

Yet Navigation is s a piece of software by google for google's platform.

> Actually, there were people asking why Google bothers with Maps and Voice for iPhone (i.e. why it is helping iPhone at expense of Android).

You seem unaware that Maps for iPhone is written entirely by Apple using Google's public APIs. As for voice, it's obviously because getting more people to use Voice plays to Google's advantage.

> If you know the answer why, you already know why Google doesn't play platform favorites.

because their platform (services) stand on top of other platforms.