Android started before the iPhone was announced. Google's stated goal with Android was to build a rich, common phone platform to enable the smartphone revoluti

Android started before the iPhone was announced. Google's stated goal with Android was to build a rich, common phone platform to enable the smartphone revolution. Remember that before Android, most phone's came with shitty little browsers and little-to-no room for third-party software. When Google bought Android, very few people had done any amount of mobile web browsing. Now, mobile makes up a notable fraction of total web usage. Google's accomplished its goal so far with Android, but it certainly didn't start out to prevent an iOS monoculture - it did to prevent a carrier-dominated oligarchy of shitty web-less feature phones. (More strategically, it's made sure that when the mobile web became important, Google services were still front-and-center.)