Comment by gpm

I'm not sure it matters what I would do if I was the company. I'm an individual evaluating what phone to buy next, regardless of motivation, Google being less abusive is no longer a reason to purchase an Android.

But to actually answer the question, I think this is a strategic mistake. I'm broadly of the opinion that:

The android ecosystem is reliant on Android capturing part of the high end market, without it their won't be sufficient money in the ecosystem. Money in the ecosystem is necessary to justify things like developers making apps, phone companies investing in product lines, advertisers paying high prices for in app ads, etc.

Android captures part of the high end market only because of enthusiasts and developers choosing and evangelizing the less abusive company. From other perspectives (hardware quality, software quality, signalling wealth, etc) Apple has generally been better. There's the occasional exception like Android being the first to flip-phone-touch-phones, but not enough to sustain an ecosystem.

And thus Google's general movement to matching Apple here is shortsighted, and likely to significantly contribute to the collapse Android's phone ecosystem, which in turn will destroy the huge source of profit that is Google Play.