One more strategy that may make sense for Google: Google "wins" when the web browsing platform is a commodity where users can run anything they want without some company trying to act as an intermediary. That brings more eyeballs to Google.com and that means ad revenue. Google looses when a firm like RIM makes a command decision to redirect web searches to Bing. Google wins when those sorts of controls are in the hands of its users.

By giving Android away, and keeping a fairly light hand on the tiller, Google provides a value proposition that the embedded market can't resist, and that the carriers grudgingly go along with because their own software development can't compete.