Google Says Android Is For Building Massive Scale In Mobile For Advertising Play

imageEvery once in awhile, I hear someone ask: “What is Google’s true intent with Android?” In an interview with CNet today, Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, puts it pretty bluntly.

For Google (NSDQ: GOOG), it’s all about extending the company’s dominance in online advertising to the mobile phone. Rubin: “Google’s business model is deep into advertising, and so for Google this is purely a scale of the business, we just want to reach more people, and hopefully they’ll use Google and we’ll get the upside of the advertising revenue.”

The need for scale is also what likely sets Google apart from what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is doing for the iPhone or Palm (NSDQ: PALM) is with the Pre, but makes it more in line with what Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is doing. Rubin: When you control the whole device the ability to innovate rapidly is pretty limited when it’s coming from a single vendor. You can have spurts of innovation. You can nail the enterprise, nail certain interface techniques, or you can nail the Web-in-the-handset business…What we’re talking about is getting out of a niche and giving people access to the Internet in the way they expect the Internet to be accessed. I don’t want to create some derivative of the Internet, I don’t want to just take a slice of the Internet, I don’t want to be in the corner somewhere with some dumbed-down version of the Internet, I want to be on the Internet.

So, should you be afraid of Google taking over the mobile space? Rubin essentially says if they are successful, it will be the consumer’s choice. “We’re confident enough in our advertising business and our ability to help people find information that we don’t somehow demand they use Google. If somebody wants to use Android to build a Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) phone, great.”

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