Such iron, much grip. You can trivially install Google play store and services on 98% of the non-licensed phones in China.
The fact that a $50B Chinese domestic Android market is thriving with zero control by Google proves the thesis to be untrue.
Then there's Amazon's fire product line. The only reason it lags Google's play store is quality. If Amazon's hardware and software/store selection were 80% as good, they'd be a serious contender - again one needs to look at China for evidence of this, where Tencent, Baidu etc. run their own successful app stores agnostic to hardware
Google's Play store is Google property, isn't a part of AOSP and isn't open source. One voluntarily chooses to install play store on phones without it, or, if you're philosophically against it, use a competitor's store.
Better, go build your own store, as many companies have. Or sideload apps. Heck, build your own phone when. All possible because Google does NOT exert influence on the open source parts of Android, specifically AOSP.
There is no point you are making about the OS (Android) by claiming Google controls an app (Play Store) running on top of the OS. The OS itself is free and open source and devoid of Google control - ample examples have been cited in my comments.
> You can trivially install Google play store and services on 98% of the non-licensed phones in China.
You can. I can. My mother and 95% (99? 99.9?) of the android users cannot.
> The fact that a $50B Chinese domestic Android market is thriving with zero control by Google proves the thesis to be untrue.
In Western countries it's true. You also can't build an online business in Europe if you're blocked by Google because they have a monopoly on search and nobody will find you. You can in China, but that doesn't change the situation in Europe (or, to a lesser extent, the US, I hear bing has some market share still).
> You can. I can. My mother and 95% (99? 99.9?) of the android users cannot.
My mom is quick to install shitload of stuff on her phone that would be much harder for me to do (I once tried shutting down Facebook group notifications on her phone and gave up after manually going through a 100 or so ;)). She will gladly follow a tutorial on the web, download apks from unsafe sources, allow all permissions the app asks for etc.
I, on the other hand, would look for a trusted source which would be much harder to find, would be weary of giving my credentials to any app, and would be even more weary of giving permissions that I do not find strictly necessary to an app that's coming on my phone.
Your mother sounds like she trusts herself to be able to do it, then looks for information (with you hoping she chooses trustworthy people) on how to do it. Most people I know pretty much shut down when they hit something they haven't encountered before, so they won't even search for the error message. Trust out of the way, a more open android is a good option for tech savvy people, but I fear the majority wouldn't be able to work with that.
Chinese phones come without Google apps in quite a number of countries other than China, and those are not only African countries. Last time I saw google free Xiaomi's in Malaysia and Indonesia for example
Agree that the install process is convoluted. Like someone else noted, if one's not signatory to Google's partnership, there are ways to remove most, if not all, of the friction.
The fact that a $50B Chinese domestic Android market is thriving with zero control by Google proves the thesis to be untrue.
Then there's Amazon's fire product line. The only reason it lags Google's play store is quality. If Amazon's hardware and software/store selection were 80% as good, they'd be a serious contender - again one needs to look at China for evidence of this, where Tencent, Baidu etc. run their own successful app stores agnostic to hardware