Given Google's tendency to kill products and shift priorities rapidly, I think building a product or service dependent on a supply of their hardware is probably a pretty risky choice.
I definitely have been shocked how fast Intel maker boards have come and gone though. It feels like Intel has written them off before anyone's tried to build a project using one. I have one sitting around here somewhere that's never so much as been powered on.
It's very hard to beat the traction that the Pi has. I think because it's explicitly targeted towards people without any embedded experience, there's been a lot of pressure to make things work and to make the documentation somewhat organised.
Intel made some nice little boards, but there wasn't much publicity and actually getting started with them wasn't easy at all because the docs were buried. They were usually modules designed for integration, not standalone devices.
With the Pi you can buy a kit, plug in the SD card and boot ot desktop in minutes.
I definitely have been shocked how fast Intel maker boards have come and gone though. It feels like Intel has written them off before anyone's tried to build a project using one. I have one sitting around here somewhere that's never so much as been powered on.