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Comment by caberus | Hacker News Reader

Google has too much authority over Android Platform itself like Apple and Microsoft :

While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform—not a bunch of incompatible versions

source : http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-imp...

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Google offer the Google Platform to people who agree to certain things. But anyone is free to fork Android at any point, if they choose - Amazon have done so, for instance, as well as many Chinese manufacturers.

They're free to fork the segment of android that google hasn't locked into their own closed-source ecosystem.

Many AOSP applications have been abandoned by google in favor of their proprietary applications.

And the reasoning is most of those apps (for better or worse) depend on Google's cloud services, so it makes no sense for them to be in AOSP.

There remains nothing stopping you replacing all the Google stuff on Android, including the very parts that make them money.

One of the sadder, non obvious, parts of the way mobile has developed is it is becoming synonymous with trivial front ends to cloud services, and not really smart client apps at all.

Not anyone -- if someone like Samsung decides to fork Android, people using their devices will suddenly find that their Google apps won't work anymore.

That's an argument against Open Source :(

Err... Which Google apps are open source? Or maybe I'm just not getting the objection.

I think you misunderstand. Google's individual apps (like GMail) are closed-source, and only licensed for use on "official" Android builds.

Seems like Android really gave Chinese and Korean companies a lifeline in the mobile phone market. Those phones either wouldn't exist or would be running the windows phone software I assume. Chinese and Korean companies benefit from Android. Blackberry and Microsoft are losing as a result.

Replace "full Android ecosystem" with "Google services" to see why your point doesn't make sense. (and that's what they are)

What do you mean too much freedom? From the user's and even developer's perspective, it's better for Android to be more like Windows (pre-Windows 8), than more like Linux (tons of different distros/forks).

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