The original post by Pichai is more carefully worded as "you can easily disable or delete them", so it's an inaccurate summary by theverge.
Isn't that literally the point? When the complaint is that Google is tying itself to the OS and leaving few viable alternative options, the fact that Google is tying itself to the OS and leaving fewer alternative options is more like an admission rather than a defense...
To make this viable, at a minimum, it should be possible to search for apps that don't depend on Play Services, so you could remove most of your apps and replace them with alternatives.
But I expect most users wouldn't do this, and so there is little incentive for most apps to stop depending on Play Services. The only real incentive to do it is to be able to publish the app on Amazon.
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/fire-os-overview.h...
While it is not (can be removed/replaced, the limitations preventing to do that are completely artificial and this is probably playing a good role in what has been judged), and even if it was, things should have been bundled differently to begin with (if they can't, that can be considered a conscious decision potentially motivated by a desire to abuse a monopoly, so in all cases that should be redesigned)
So it's mostly same cause/same effects from an high level overview -- and I'm not surprised. Maybe the way to become compliant (after their pointless whining phase has passed) will even be similar? I'm not buying the business model argument. Google browser, play store and so over are now extremely well established and won't be abandoned by any kind of mass exodus any time soon. In ten years, they can be challenged, but that's the fucking POINT: practical competition should be allowed.
It's astonishing that everybody and their dog was scandalized by MS behavior in the time (and some even are today, despite present MS being quite different from the old one), while Google has somehow managed to be considered friendly regardless of the doing exactly the same shit, if not worse, while simultaneously even pretending that they are not evil. Well maybe evil is a strong word, and I can concede that they did not pretend they are not hypocrites :p
Other thing is, if every OEM starts writing their own API for these services, app developers will have to write apps for each OEM because they for sure will not work with each other. We will go back to the days of Symbian where apps will come with a huge list of phones it is known to work with.
FWIW, I too hate that there isn't a replacement for those Play Services. I'm so frustrated - Pixel launcher will not show temperature in Celsius unless I give it "Web and App Activity" permission.
This is pretty surprising - what locale are you using?
Temperature units preference is saved in Google Search app. Pixel launcher, even though it shows the news cards from Search app, cannot show temperature in the units of my choice unless I give it the "Web and App activity" permission. Just Google things.
But sure, in a mass market setting, I don't find it at all surprising that you wouldn't be allowed to disable Settings.
The vast majority of the Android market, in the US at least I can assure you, has google or carrier based spyware that you can't delete or disable.
[1]https://www.recode.net/2017/10/4/16418170/google-pixel-marke...