As BS as I consider business school to be, the Porter Five Forces model is an excellent way to look at everything Google does. Android doesn't exist to make Goo

As BS as I consider business school to be, the Porter Five Forces model is an excellent way to look at everything Google does. Android doesn't exist to make Google money. Android exists to keep Apple honest with the threat of competition so that they don't circumvent the access route to Google. This is why Google funded Firefox/Built Chrome --- to prevent a monopoly browser from somehow blocking access to Google. In B-School they relentlessly push the idea that you should "commoditize your complements". Joel has a post on this from 2002 (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html). In the really high level view, everything that Google does that is not search is in service of this goal. That is why it doesn't make money. Commodity markets are _supposed_ to be near-unprofitable. In the larger goal, they exist to prevent supplier-competition.