[garuda]

It's just a platform they use to deliver their services to their customers - the same way that everyone else does.

[starmole]

Not quite that simple. Google does at least partially own the platform and made a lot of noise about html being a better platform for being open before. Everybody else just makes a business decision what they need to support. Native, Flash, HTML, browser variations. For Google this is more of a power play, and a bit of a bait and switch as HTML was sold as being free of those power plays.

[garuda]

Google gives away all their client platforms as open source (i.e. Chrome and Android), so it's hardly a power play when compared with the other options.