Android and the philosopher’s pencil

The premise of this argument is that Google's services require a Google-supplied OS. This premise is false, and therefore this little article is just plain silly.

It is in Google's best interests to see to it that there is a widely-available, royalty-free platform upon which to build the thin clients necessary to use the services in the cloud. iOS works just as well. Use iOS and you are in no way limited in the Google web services which you can use. Apps are another story - and a key part of this puzzle. If you were Google, would you want to get locked into a single-vendor's platform? Of course not. Thus we have Android - an open platform which keeps the industry honest.

Witness the Google Voice debacle: A freely available service that Google wanted to make usable on iOS, but Apple refused. Android is a direct response to platform vendors refusing to support open standards.