> if you think this is about 'providing users with products' and generating a return on investment.

In who's eyes?

Consumers want the best product.

Investors want a payout.

How does GPL satisfy either of these?

GPL doesn't have the nimbleness to be viable with the market. It doesn't respect creativity and time of developers or investors - leaving consumers left to pick a proprietary / permissive alternative.

You don't need to be GPL to be open: You can MIT/BSD/Apache and still volunteer to not give out binary blobs [1]

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435