Comment by hahainternet
11 years ago
Is it really that obvious? What power are they grabbing? By this reasoning, Google may not augment any 'traditional' AOSP service with improved functionality. That's obviously ridiculous, so what solution would you envisage?
The article was pointing out how Google is moving more and more functionality from open source to closed source. So, one way to counter that would be to augment the "traditional AOSP service with improved functionality", but license the code as open source. The service endpoints can certainly be closed, but the code to access those endpoints could be open. And the license to use those endpoints could be open source friendly.
Now, that may not be a good business decision, but it certainly counters the argument of the post.
An aside: I appreciate what google is doing to fight Android fragmentation, but also see some of the tactics as anti-competitive.