Uninformed speculation:
They want a pile of users for their online applications.
At small cost they can provide an appliance that provides always-on,
always-networked services that people want: search, photo management,
content delivery, and I'm betting soon a home office suite. Portable
documents where ever google is.
And largely funded through their advertising model which gets to
target people even more accurately based on their documents and work
habits.
Don't think of it as a PC, but rather as a terminal to the Google
server.
Paul
