[willifred]

I agree that the author's points are purely speculative, but the situation kind of demands speculation, since the official answer was very unsatisfying.

The tablet market somehow seems more competitive than mobile is currently, and third parties like Amazon could rebrand/white label Honeycomb for complete rival tablet platforms, forgoing the 'with Google' label, services, ad platform, etc. Tablets are general computing platforms and not locked down like the carrier dominated mobile market; Google would have a tougher time controlling this kind of thing than they do with mobile phones.

[trotsky]

Seems like that's what was done with the Nook, no? While I can see your point, I guess I'm just not convinced that google sees projects like that as hurting them. Surely a traditional vendor would seek lock in and revile such a use, but isn't the whole point of android open source that google's platform is their web applications/ad platform and that's where they seek to stymie competition?