If you think about it Google's entire business model operates this way. How much do you pay for GMail, YouTube, Search, etc? $0 yet Google has to spend $X per u

If you think about it Google's entire business model operates this way. How much do you pay for GMail, YouTube, Search, etc? $0 yet Google has to spend $X per user to provide and maintain the service, pay the bandwidth bills, pay the engineers, etc. They're recouping all that money and a ridiculous amount of profit on advertising. I don't think it's too far out of the realm of possibility they would extend this model to hardware in selected markets where they are pretty late to the game (as a platform provider) If this is indeed Google's strategy we will see subsidized Chrome OS based net books next year also.