Good for them, but...
Does this translate into revenue or profit for Google? Nope.
Does this translate into a possible willing user base for developers to sell their apps to? Nope.
Google gets excited from this statistic because it's a possibility for a developer to build a mediocre app subsidized by Google advertising. Android users have so far shown an unwillingness to pay for apps, they instead prefer to download free, ad-sponsored apps. One possible reason for this is that they don't consider Android to be a platform worth investing in or they may not even consider Android to be a platform at all. If this is the case, then it means Android is doing nothing more than taking market share away from feature phones.
This is how I see things are going...
Consumer replaces old feature phone with Android based phone. They don't really do anything substantial with it, but kinda get a taste of the smart phone world. When it comes time to renew, if they're curious about doing more things with a phone as a mobile computer, they move to iOS, otherwise, they stick with Android. Now this obviously isn't every Android user, as some are enthusiasts and may actually prefer the experience, but a vast majority of consumers aren't interested, they just want a phone at the cheapest price and pretty soon all phones will have Android on them, more than likely running Android 2.3. (3.x was DOA, 4.0 requires too much hardware to be cost effective at the lower end.)
This is how iOS will continue to make gains as a platform (developer support, content, customer loyalty) and why Android will be just a mobile phone* market share statistic.
*No other tablet is going to become a viable contender to the iPad, until it has a strong platform with a thriving ecosystem to support it. Like the iPod, the iPad is not a must have device. The iPod was an elegant, convenient way to listen to your music or play media, but there were other traditional ways of doing this already. This is true for the iPad as well, there are other traditional ways of computing. Apple made it possible to do the same thing in a more intimate manner with the resources to support and enhance it.
Apple was never going to have a majority of the PC market, because they don't compete across the entire market. This is why they are never going to have a majority of the mobile phone market either. But they are very good at refining market segments and dominating them; portable media players, tablet computing and online digital content.
Edited by mjtomlin - 6/27/12 at 7:00pm