Add to this the fact that Android is free (Google makes no money in it) and you can see why all hardware manufacturers are moving like droves to the tablet market.
Google does make money on Android, through selling the eyeballs of it's users. The entire goal was to make a new advertising platform they could control.
Another result of this - hardware vendors have no motivation to keep the OS up to date after they've stopped selling that model - why add value to an old model that will then compete with your new models?
Nobody is looking out for the end users in either case, other than tangentially in ways to further their own business goals or prevent PR nightmares.