The "customer" is the person giving you money. We aren't Google's customers; we're the product. An online advertiser is nearly as unable to avoid buying from Go

The "customer" is the person giving you money. We aren't Google's customers; we're the product. An online advertiser is nearly as unable to avoid buying from Google in 2011 than a PC manufacturer was unable to avoid buying from Microsoft in 1998. Google giving away Android for free to create a moat around their core advertising product is exactly analogous to Microsoft giving away the browser for free to create a moat around their core OS product. These are not new observations, but people either don't understand or don't care. After all, most of us have the reasonable perception that we're getting excellent products for free. Disclaimer: I work for the Evil Empire in Redmond.