A lot of users are lost in the functionality of modern desktop operating systems. For Apple, this means a worse experience and lost content sales. For Google, this means lost advertising dollars.
It makes sense that both companies would eventually converge on trying to radically simplify the user interface.
This is true. I think assuming that Apple will remain stubbornly wedded to their hardware business, and its hefty profits, at the expense of being there for the thin/cloud future isn't giving Jobs enough credit. We already know he understands where things are going, because of the ever expanding iTunes empire, and because of the App Store. It's unfortunate, however, that Apple wields this knowledge to evil end rather than good. (It is evil to use near-monopoly strength to impose closed ecosystems on consumers and developers, in case anyone here isn't already aware of that fact. We mostly all agreed on this when it was Microsoft doing the imposing, but now that it's wrapped up in a beautiful package and presented like it's a bag of magic beans to a credulous audience at Mac World, many of us forget it.)
Luckily, I tend to think openness wins eventually, even if we have a few detours along the way. Hopefully, the detour won't last much longer in the mobile space. In content, it's finally starting to get straightened out. Consumers may be stupid, but they're also cheap, and openness tends to have some advantages there.
That said, Apple's interest isn't in thin clients because once they're too thin, it gets pretty hard to sell you a new one.