At no point is anybody going to "win" this particular contest. Numbers go up and down and back and forth, but this isn't a horse race. If any company were to win here (even, or possibly especially, Google) it would be a huge loss for everyone. The fact that you're even using that word is very telling. Monopolies are bad news for everyone regardless of who possesses them.

You seem to be rooting for some sort of open source monopoly rather than a Google monopoly, but I think even that would be a bad thing. I'd much rather see a world where different business models and different development methodologies (open source vs. proprietary vs. hybrid, walled gardens vs. Wild West vs. everything in between, etc.) are all doing what they do best and competing with each other and learning from each other.

It's absolutely true that Android as you know it now simply would not exist if it didn't originally have the iPhone to draw inspiration from; this is pretty incontrovertible. I'm not saying that to denigrate Android in any way, but rather to point out that different approaches to product development have different pros and cons, and having all of those approaches coexisting and competing and evolving is a much better situation for everyone than having only one major player or one development methodology industry-wide. This is includes the seemingly-positive-but-not-really outcome where some form of "freedom" or "openness" becomes the monopoly.

"Google winning is good for everyone" is propaganda that Google uses when they are threatened. Google is no different from any other corporation. Once they have power, they exercise it to their advantage to increase their share of profits.

Also, you should check your facts - Samsung has not exceeded Apple in smartphone profits. They have exceeded Apple in phone profits overall. You might as well throw washing machines into the mix if you are going to include profits from single purpose appliances that are not general purpose computers.

So basically because you "want Google to win" because you believe they are somehow different from any other corporation, you are trumpeting a false statistic in order to convince others that destiny is somehow at work, going in the direction you want.

If this isn't shilling for Google, I don't know what is.

If you're talking about what will make a company more profitable in the future, I agree with you. No one chooses one company over another because that company makes more profit. But in the context of this discussion, I don't think it is right to overlook things such as profits, market share and the volume of devices that's on the market.

As for your last point, I don't think regular consumers cares about open/closed platforms. They probably don't even know what that means. We're talking about mobile devices, not desktop computers. People want devices that just works, especially if those devices are built to make their lives easier, not harder. Android used to have a lot of problems but now they caught up to iOS (even surpassed it). Android is not where it is today because it is open[1]. Android would've had the same success if it was as closed as iOS.

In the general scheme of things, I agree with you. Android is not completely open and definitely not a free software, but it is better for consumers than iOS (and I'm an iOS user). But as long as there's a competition and either of those companies (Apple and Google) don't get to do whatever the hell they want, I'm saying that the consumer wins. It doesn't matter which company has the more open OS.

[1] Android had a lot of options in terms of devices, so their openness was a factor in their success, but it was not a major one.

Google might be slightly better as a gatekeeper, but to me they seem completely untrustworthy at this point. Between their "spring cleanings" and "open handset alliance versus android variants" debacles, I don't think we should root for google. I'd rather see somebody like Mozilla win.

Tell me again how Google winning the RSS reader market was good for everyone.