When Google released the Nexus One it revealed another very important strategic imperative for offering Android free of charge. Google realized that all the sm

When Google released the Nexus One it revealed another very important strategic imperative for offering Android free of charge. Google realized that all the smartphone manufacturers were scrambling to build/acquire mobile operating systems that would stack up to the iPhone OS. These handset manufacturers were vulnerable, in other words, to the kind of offer Google would present to them in the form of the open source Android OS. They needed what Android had to offer and the risks involved with sacrificing so much leverage over to Google (by relying on a third-party company for a key component of their product) did not outweigh the benefits of the collusion-like behavior all these manufacturers planned on partaking in by together building-out a large mobile app store that could champion iPhone's app store. Now that Google has released their very own handset, the Nexus One, it's obvious why Google wanted as many Android handsets in hands as possible: higher the market share, more developers willing to build apps, the more apps in the Android app store the better the Nexus One looks in light of iPhone's enormously successful app store, the more Nexus One handsets Google will sell. Google has always explained that they give Android away because it will encourage more usage of their web services. But after Nexus One, it's obvious Google has more of a vested interest in Android than just "the more people on the internet, the more money Google makes".