Comment by MichaelGG
11 years ago
The only real thing that seems "evil" is the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks. The rest of it seems pretty necessary in order to keep carriers and OEMs in line. A lesson Microsoft learned, and why Windows Phone started off by allowing the user to remove any pre-installed crap.
If Google didn't do any of this, and was totally altruistic, Samsung and others would already have completely screwed things up.
While it's certainly very much to Google's benefit, it also benefits most users because overall, Google has done a far better job than any OEM regarding user experience.
In fact, the boundaries of the compatibility requirement are pretty fuzzy.
For instance, the Acer/Aliyun situation is more complicated than presented. The Aliyun app store was distributing pirated apps (including pirated Google apps): http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-con...
It seems obvious that Acer would have wound up in hot water with Google over this somehow, though it is odd that Google decided to focus their complaint on compatibility (rather than on Aliyun's piracy).
On the other side of the coin, many Android OEMs have distributed (and still distribute, so far as I know) devices without Google apps for the Chinese market (including Samsung, ASUS, Huawei, and even Motorola [1]). So far as I can remember, these were always essentially the same as non-Chinese devices except that they came with a different ROM that didn't include Google Apps. Nevertheless, that means that there's some scope for making non-Google Android devices, we just don't know how far it goes. Maybe if the HTC/Amazon rumors turn out to be true, we'll find out more.
[1] Though I think Motorola's efforts were shut-down post-merger because of Google's China policies.
> the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks
Is that really where the line is? My understanding is that it is almost the opposite: an OEM cannot manufacture any devices that break compatibility with AOSP, not support compatibility with a 3rd party fork. And the constraint is a condition of membership of AOSP rather than something imposed directly by Google. They can make things as compatible with as many non-Google forks as they want. They can break all compatibility wherever they want if they give up AOSP membership.