>It may be hard for people to imagine now, but back in 1996/1997, selling browser software was like selling spreadsheet or word processing software. People paid

>It may be hard for people to imagine now, but back in 1996/1997, selling browser software was like selling spreadsheet or word processing software. People paid $50+/copy for their browser. It was a threat to Microsoft (potential alternative application platform) - so they eliminated it (Cut off Netscape's Air supply) - by giving the browser away for free with their operating system - and, because everyone (for most reasonable definitions of everyone) was running Microsoft's operating system on their desktop, there was no longer any need to buy it from Netscape. And that in turn lead to further addinng fuel to the internet by lowering the barrier to entry for users leading to a feedback loop. $50+ was more than a months salary in many countries. I am sure many divisions in RIM and Nokia were cut because of Google "dumping" Android for free by leveraging profits from their search(not to mention bundling Chrome with Flash and Java updates leading to the charts in the article). But Android does lead to more people accessing the internet through smartphones and that is a huge net gain to all of us regardless of a few companies getting hurt short term.