Grubes on the economics of Android and Chrome:
Chrome makes no money at all on its own. It’s just a funnel for Google Search. Android maybe sort of kind of makes a little money for Google on its own, through the sale of Pixel devices, but it’s negligible. Like Chrome, Android really only exists as a funnel to keep users using Google search and within the broader Google digital ecosystem.
The best counterargument I could come up with was that both serve as first-party digital private investigators, which is likely worth something, though even that ultimately reduces to "broader Google ecosystem" which, itself, also seems to reduce down to search. Does Google sell its behavioral analytics data?
There's an interesting example of the power of this surveillence in The Trust Engineers podcast. Facebook had somewhat naively demonstrated that they had users [nearly everyone?] involved in several A/B style psychological tests at once, and were modifying feeds in ways that seemed to change those users' outlooks on life in general. Horrible ethical optics, and it sounds like potentially horrible ethical outcomes. Can you convince people to shop more? Spend more in specific categories? Give to charities less? Support fringe causes? Change political positions? Break family bonds? Etc.
I guess that's the power that Android and Chrome bring, though there is a bit of an underpants gnomes feel in here somewhere. Either this stuff is so effective I completely miss it or my inclination is accurate: They really don't know how to sell me music, books, goods that I actually like yet, even with all the extra information I've given them, intentionally or not. One day they might make a hard right into exploitation, but so far it doesn't really feel like they're even trying. I might have a profile they sell to companies who buy advertisements, but the advertisements aren't that much more effective than they were 20 years ago, and they should be waaaaay more effective by now!
Still, the point is a very interesting one: What's the long game for these culturally-central open source projects Google backs? Because it's certainly not as simple a profit-seeking setup as, say, selling lemonade on a hot day.