[onetimeuse001]

Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?

Android has cost billions but what if Apple and Microsoft shared the mobile market and replaced the default SE with Bing or Yahoo? That was Google's worry and that's why they spent billions for years. That huge expense was essentially hidden by filling web search pages with ads in commercial niches to the point of making them unusable. When earnings grow by double digit questions are few

[uffel]

Google saw that in mobile you only get a seat at the table by owning a platform demanded by customers or by being a carrier. Otherwise, you're just a feature on someone else's product–-something that can easily be swept away. You're thinking along the right lines. Google's decision to develop Android should be evaluated not by whether it has made profit to date, but by the alternatives facing Google at the time.