TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Andy Rubin, founder of Android, explains how Google’s business works:

“We don’t monetize the things we create,” Andy Rubin says. “We monetize the people that use it. The more people that use our products, the more opportunity we have to advertise to them.”

That’s from Steven Levy’s In the Plex.

Sounds a little like something I wrote in January.

Google’s Android strategy is to get as many Android devices in use so they can both advertise to their users and so they can define mobile devices for their benefit—free, cloud services-based. If web-backed services become the norm for mobile devices, that’s great for Google; odds are they will be their services, running their ads, and collecting even more user data for Google to mine. It will add to Google’s already overwhelming advantage; they will have the majority of people’s search data, browsing habits, and mobile use habits, as well. What we search, what we look at on the web, what we do on our mobile devices, and if they want, where we go.

With Google, we aren’t the customer. Their advertisers are. We are the product.