Android and chrome…google TV, gMail, Wave (ok not wave), google docs, flickr, youtube, cloud storage etc…
Google has their fingers all over. They make the phone OS (Android) compelling to get in front of people and thus (directly or indirectly) control (control is the wrong word, but keep reading) ads, apps, and content. They don’t make the content, but they can get a hand in placing ads in front of people (which is how they make a chunk of their money). They also get to know peoples habits etc which can be useful at some point in “knowing” which ads a person would be susceptible to.
Also a lot of the apps in the google app store are free, but I think if an app is free then it will be ad supported…if an app costs money then google gets a slice of whatever the customer pays.
It’s quite interesting what they’ve done. One has to follow tech news closely to sort of get a picture of it…