Motorola was left for dead before Android. HTC jumped out to an early lead with Android and their stock went up 400%. And they're both in the toilet now. Andro

Motorola was left for dead before Android. HTC jumped out to an early lead with Android and their stock went up 400%. And they're both in the toilet now. Android saved neither company. I think you're missing why Google open sourced Android. What B&N and Amazon did with it is exactly the point of why Android is open source Google cares about selling ads. It shows those ads on websites, in emails, in apps, and in services like search and mail. Before iOS and Android, smartphones ran Symbian, Blackberry or Windows Mobile. None of those had a decent web browser, which Google needed to attract users and show ads. So it's pretty obvious why Google bought Android and why they open sourced it. Now, do you want to guess what would happen if Amazon and B&N added built-in ad blocking to their Android devices?