Amazing as it sounds,
Google (
GOOG) didn’t
develop Android as an altruistic gesture — it developed Android to drive mobile traffic to Google services and thus make more money for the company. While that has so far served the company very well, the platform’s open-source nature means that companies such as Amazon (
AMZN) and Samsung (
005930) have been able to design their own versions of
Android that place less emphasis on staple Google services and more emphasis on their own. Facebook (
FB)
took things to a whole new level this week when it unveiled Facebook Home, a downloadable app that essentially replaces users’ Android smartphone home screens with Facebook content.
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