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> You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience.

Not to hundreds of millions of Chinese Android users.

Same in Russia, where Yandex presents a very viable alternative. Their maps, for instance, are better.

> In reality almost everyone nicely complies with google's compatibility definition, constraining how far they can fork android, just in order to get access to google's closed source apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Google%20Inc....

The point of the CCD [1] is to ensure that new devices can run a test suite that ensures they work correctly with Android as it currently exists. CCD isn't just about Google Play and Google Play Services, its about the fundamental functioning of the OS.

[1]: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

Depends where you live, i'm pretty sure Google's Chinese services are pretty dire compared to the native alternatives.

well at least you can say android can and has been forked, you can't say the same about iOS or windows..