A number of reasons 1 - Google make money from sales in the Android Market 2 - Google makes money from adverts and charges in their own applications + service

A number of reasons 1 - Google make money from sales in the Android Market 2 - Google makes money from adverts and charges in their own applications + services running under Android 3 - Google makes money selling adverts in other applications running under Android 4 - Google learns a lot about mobile usage from Android 5 - Google can charge manufacturers for the ability to pre-install Google applications All of these are either impossible or harder under the iPhone, which at the time of the Android launch, was looking like gaining a dominant market share on smart phones, and Apple had already started to "abuse" or take advantage of this market share by cutting out competitors.