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Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

It is really a pity, as this means Android OS is closing down.

Without supported Consumer Hardware available on the market in sufficient volume, even less end-users will use an alternative OS, which will affect quality and size of the alternative OS-market and fragment the remaining users even more.

This will put the future of the entire alternative-OS ecosystem firmly back into the hands of Google. If they start further restricting BL-unlock on the Pixel-series to e.g. only Google Developer Account-Holders, the whole ecosystem will finally close down.

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I’ve always said that it’s been “Google’s Android”, and wellp —- Welcome to Google’s Android, where the garden walls have been turned into a razorwire fence and you’re not welcome to leave.

It’s really funny that Apple’s finally allowing carefully controlled access outside of their own fences and slowly adding more APIs and expansion (hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU) while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it.

Of course it's been Google's Android, I don't think anyone ever questioned that. The whole reason why the OS still lives as a single entity and the app-ecosystem is not completely fragmented is due to Google's governance to keep it in check.

All the stuff Apple now slowly starts to allow on iOS due to EU's Digital Markets Act is still just scratching the surface of what Android already supports.

> hell, Apple are the only platform now with third party APIs for RCS in the EU

They provide third party API's to use APPLE's RCS-Service. The alternative would have been to support registering alternative RCS-services as default on the OS (and then, allow the user to choose a service).

> while Google’s spun an about face and will get away with it

Android already allows to install and configure alternative applications for RCS, in fact Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices.

> Samsung uses their own RCS Messaging service on its devices

No? They’ve switched to Google Messages, and most/all carriers have switched to Google Jibe RCS (again, Google forcing its services into operator hands), which basically forces SafetyNet attestation to use.

Sorry, you're right. I stand corrected, Samsung discontinued their own RCS-Service in January 2025. Yet the point stands, Google doesn't restrict usage of alternative RCS-services on its devices, Apple does.

> again, Google forcing its services into operator hands

Frankly no. Carriers tried to make RCS work and failed for many years. I was involved in so many meetings, individual projects, interoperability testfests, just to make all the crazy "flavors" of RCS required from different operators work with each other. Each of the large carriers thought he could do RCS better than the next one, destroying simplicity, reliability, interoperability.

Many of them rolled out their own RCS-service initially, with flaky UX and ridiculous limitations making it weaker than WhatsApp at that time.

Google didn't start this mess, and didn't force itself into this matter. But yes, they ended it by acquiring Jibe and unifying the platform.

>They provide third party API's to use APPLE's RCS-Service. The alternative would have been to support registering alternative RCS-services as default on the OS (and then, allow the user to choose a service).

RCS messaging is carrier-controlled and configured via carrier bundles in iOS. Apple doesn't run a "RCS service". TelephonyMessageKit [0] in iOS 26+ exposes a standard interface to the carrier SMS, MMS, and RCS services, as applicable, allowing for 3rd party applications to send and receive carrier standards-based messages.

In 3GPP standards, RCS is just another service using the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) framework. Carriers can either run their own RCS service in their IMS core or use a 3rd party service (as many do with Google's Jibe).

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/telephonymessaging...

Google is first and foremost an advertising company. They're going to do whatever makes them the most profit. It always had razor wire fences unfortunately.

It's a datamining company, and there are many ways to profit off of that...

It's like saying Disney is an "image showing" company.

I'd argue that they are not merely an advertising company, they are an "attention facilitating company", taking and curating attention of large groups of users and making it systematically available to other parties, acting as middleman.

You know, like Apple...

> [A] is first and foremost a [B] company. They're going to do whatever makes them the most profit.

This is the definition of any commercial business.

I have to disagree... while most "corporations" are chartered in such a way that shareholder value is maximized, you can put other provisions and leadership goals into a corporate charter, and privately owned businesses can have much more leeway in terms of structure and goals.

Many NPOs are corporations/companies legally, but their founding structure isn't to maximize shareholder profits/value. Beyond this, most businesses have two operating models, one is for maximum stock price, which increases the value, but that remains static without trade and/or to provide dividends from profits, which tends to keep stock values more level. With the latter, a business might not be chasing a 20% growth every year, but a healthy margin and predictable dividends to shareholders.

IANAL, this is not legal advice... but if you start a company, and want to emphasize values beyond pure growth/value, then what I would do is definitely talk to a good corporate attorney and tune the founding charter documents to that effect.

You're ignoring an elephant here: Apple meticulously enables these extras functionality exclusively in the EU. They cut these features out for the rest of the world as much as they can. In that regard, they feel like the corporate equivalent of a stubborn 3 tear old.

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