Hardware is free, software is the profit center and advertising

[ibm650]

The new model is hardware is just a platform.  So you want to close it as much as possible.  Think about it, Apple makes 30 percent of all purchases no USB or SD.  Nexus 7 has no sd card, nor does the Kindle
tablet), both are locked as much as possible to the infrastructure.  The Kindle to Amazon, the Nexus 7 to Google, the Nook to B&N (although it has a micro SD). 
The Amazon reader use Mobi format.
The conclusion is that Companies want to lock you into their infrastructure.
Thus the reason we do not see sd on the Nexus.

[Babyfacemagee]

I think there's some truth to there being a 'razors and blades' approach in the tech industry.  I don't think the Nexus 7 is really locked down however.   With Apple and Amazon products you are restricted to only buying from their respective stores for games, books, movies etc.   Not so with the Nexus 7.   There's nothing stopping you from buying at Amazon.com or any other place on the web with your Nexus 7 and even though the Google Play store comes preinstalled on your device you can install the kindle or nook apps and buy and read books with those with no restrictions.   On the Kindle Fire for instance, unless you root your device you are not able to install the Google Play app.  So while Google of course would like you to stay with their services and store...they aren't as controlling and 'closed' as the others.  That's one of the nice things about the Android platform.  It's more open than the 'walled gardens' of Apple and Amazon.

[S.Prime]

Steve Jobs is quoted in his biography as saying, "Apple's main purpose in producing equipment so that users will buy from the Apple Store." Locking the garden gate as Apple and Amazon have done by limiting you to there content, leverages platform control as ibm650 stated. Fortunately Google's Nexus 7 while leveraging it's position with Google Play Store pre-installed, initial setup of a Gmail account, and request for location access for customized content, allows you the choice to opt out. I can understand a supplier wanting to leverage their position, but I resent having a supplier restrict me to their choices.

[radiocycle]

It wasn't always such...  'In the beginning' Apple was open like all blossoming software/hardware start-ups.  Gradually, Apple became more and more proprietary until now, where a program is written that can be run on a variety of machines made by any vendor or even kluged together from spare parts, and then there is the special code which must be re-written each time, to run on an Apple.  Personally, on principle, I will never own an ipad, ipod, ifone, or any other 'i' product no matter how easy and fun they are purported to be.  At this point, Apple is antithetical to open source and to a free internet.

[LanceJ]

I think there's some truth to there being a 'razors and blades' approach in the tech industry.  I don't think the Nexus 7 is really locked down however.   With Apple and Amazon products you are restricted to only buying from their respective stores for games, books, movies etc.   Not so with the Nexus 7.   There's nothing stopping you from buying at Amazon.com or any other place on the web with your Nexus 7 and even though the Google Play store comes preinstalled on your device you can install the kindle or nook apps and buy and read books with those with no restrictions.   On the Kindle Fire for instance, unless you root your device you are not able to install the Google Play app.  So while Google of course would like you to stay with their services and store...they aren't as controlling and 'closed' as the others.  That's one of the nice things about the Android platform.  It's more open than the 'walled gardens' of Apple and Amazon.

The argument that you can use the nexus 7 to acquire books and other media items from places such as amazon can be used with apple also... I've got the kindle app on my iPhone... I can download books from amazon, movies I can watch from other sources than iTunes etc... Don't get me wrong, I'm switching to a galaxy nexus next week, but because apple isn't being near as innovative as google currently is...