Wow, some of the comments on that article saying Google should have made Android closed source are mindboggling. They realize they never would have had their current worldwide marketshare if they did that, no?

But maybe if they did, we would have had more people working on true linux phones 🤔 I'm a bit torn on this one haha.

I don't think this article is right.

Competition is good. The problem is uneducated buyers.

I like it. I've never been a fan of the proprietary Google services and everything relying on their APIs, push notifications and everything using their servers. Breaking that and fragmenting the ecosystem means developers have to come up with other solutions, maybe standardize protocols and not just rely on Google's services because they're easy to use.

Currently contactless payment only properly works with Google as a middleman. Every proprietary app displays locations in Google Maps, there is no choice to not send your location to Google. Nearly every messenger routes push notifications over Google's servers. There is no text to speech for other languages than English. No car play etc. Some proprietary apps rely on Firebase because it's easy to use. Some don't even work at all without Google. It's more the source code of the operating system is open and permissively licensed, but they took care the higher level functions that are super important to apps and the user all rely on them.

This article's mentioned examples of disharmony, confusion, further division, and fragmentation... are really not even a global issue across Android. It cited a hardware-specific accessory, an Amazon internal corporate decision, and ignores a basic fact about apps or services is you can go with another app or service to fit your personal liking and functionality.

Sad how far Android Police have fallen, as well as Google themselves

Is the author proposing that exclusive features are a bad thing? I don't think the premise of Android is everyone should be the same tho. It's also not a bad thing to have different options.

It is confusing. If you have two apps on your phone that do the same thing, how is the new user supposed to know what to do? I'm thinking of Samsung and how they insist on shipping their own branded stuff that, for the most part, brings nothing new to the table.