Part of the product is ad space. Ad space without an audience is worthless. They are selling ad space bundled with a large audience of millions of eyeballs (us), plus the knowledge they have from scanning our Gmail, our Google+ posts, our Google search activity, and every other Google service (our data).
Apple's revenue is almost entirely from us and not from advertisers. Google's revenue is almost entirely from advertisers. This results in very different motivations and very different customer service.
Let's take for example, the Nexus One. When Google sold this, there was no phone support, no email support, no support whatsoever. You could order your phone, receive a nonworking unit, and literally have no way to contact service about it, because there was no such thing.
This is in stark contrast to people with Adsense accounts (advertisers), who did in fact have access to all the normal forms of customers support. Advertisers had far superior access to customer service because they are Google's revenue stream.
With Apple we have telephone support, chat support, walk-in retail support, and on-site support. We are the customers.
Anyway, I hate that I've been drawn into an argument on the Internet. We've both wasted time on this. I use services and products from both companies and like both of them, but I am able to recognize the fundamental differences. If you want to be really obtuse you can pretend they are exactly the same. I don't care.
