Whether I usually agree with Jack's articles or not, I think he's dead on, on this one. Agreed, who would ever heard of cheap tablets flooding the market without Android, made by one of the largest open source users in the world, albeit painted evil by some? Otherwise we'd be stuck with all-proprietary, albeit pervasive iThis and iThat devices, I suppose, or Windows motley offering, even though they're TRYING to catch up with Surface (I personally don't see that happening.)
Now that all these Android devices exist, Ubuntu gives you the CHOICE to install it with dash on them, OR choose something else like Xubuntu, for your desktop. And yes, Canonical would never have been able to get this far without making a profit off something. I don't begrudge them their Amazon integration, although I never use it and know how to TAKE IT OUT if i want (the beauty of Linux allows that, easily.)