I'm sorry I was unclear. You are correct I didn't intend to imply otherwise. My point was more specific to the case at hand. If Google distributes the code to s

I'm sorry I was unclear. You are correct I didn't intend to imply otherwise. My point was more specific to the case at hand. If Google distributes the code to say an end-consumer, they need to be prepared to distribute the source as well. That consumer can then provide that source to any of Google's competitors and they can make use of it in their own products. In most of these cases a company like Google would probably stop wasting time and simply make the source for any consumer products easily accessible by all. However, Google need not provide the source to people that they do not distribute the code to (well obviously there are differences between e.g. GPLv2 and GPLv3, but whatever this isn't a legal analysis). For example, if Google uses it internally they may not need to release the source to anyone at all. They're all important points that more people need to understand, but they aren't really the ones that I was making in this thread and none of them are really specific to Google vs. other companies.