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Not having to join your phone to Google Skynet is a major plus for many people.

Also, many Android devices are in the same boat (pun intended!) as the vendors haven't licensed the proprietary bits from Google.

Yeah, it'll be interesting. This really is also the key question as to whether non-Google Android distributions are actually viable. Essentially whether controlled Play Services means you control Android. Although, bear in mind that they are running their own App Store, so they should be able to filter for reliance on those APIs, which would at least mean you wouldn't have software crashing (just people somewhat mystified as to why certain Apps aren't available).

Jolla uses Yandex.Store instead of Google Play. See http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/13/jolla-yandex/