For while entering the tablet market helps the viability of Android and keeps competitive pressure on Apple, Google itself has relatively little to gain from a strong presence in the tablet market even if it can gain such a foothold. It's becoming clear that much of tablet usage is in the home and growth is coming at the expense of notebooks, where Google already has dominant market share in search. Unlike in smartphones, where Android was able to ride the wave of carrier preference to become a force to be reckoned with in the U.S., there's a far more tenuous tie between the tablet and cellular service. And while we are starting to see more big names such as Acer, Sony and Samsung follow Motorola down the Honeycomb path, we're also seeing companies opt out in order to hit price points that are farther afield from where Apple is playing.

Of course, there is the argument that Android tablets also cause competitive pain for Google's search competitor Microsoft. But Microsoft is well on its way to an expanded presence in another computing setting that represents a better opportunity for Android: the automobile. More than a decade after the disappointing debut of the AutoPC, Microsoft has created a winning partnership with Ford on Sync. And at the IFA Press Conference in Alicante, Ford announced that it is expanding Sync to Europe. Clearly that opens a driver's side door for Android to power competitive systems. And if Android won't step in, car companies have another option in MeeGo, which is being developed in a dashboard-centric version.

Car companies are notoriously slow in integrating new technologies, but the vehicle is a platform where Apple has chosen to go with behind the curve with third-party connections rather than address the opportunity head-on, so Google can play to the kind of distribution that made Android a smartphone powerhouse. More importantly, cars are probably the second-most powerful devices behind the smartphone for connecting sellers to buyers in the physical world.

And that is simply core to Google's revenue stream. The company has demonstrated that it realizes this with its work on driving directions in its navigation app and has tried to seed the market with car docks for products like Nexus One and Droid smartphones. Like Microsoft, Google is doing some great work in voice recognition that is showing up on Android handsets. Sync has shown, though, how intelligent in-vehicle multimedia control can nicely complement smartphones. For Google, an integrated offering for the imminently connected car is a more important long-term priority than the relative homebody that is the slate.