Sometimes people make things that are useful to Google or find bugs for them. It has no meaningful cost to them as long as non-Google Android isn’t appealing to mainstream users.
Huawei and their HarmonyOS would disagree with you on how many users there are on an AOSP variant. It’s a meaningful cost to Google, which is probably what is motivating them to lock down their phones now.
Huawei was forced to offer non-Google Android due to USA sanctions. I don’t know whether that has created difficulties for them in the Chinese market, but a quick search shows a significant decline in market share in Europe.
I do think Amazon launching an Android phone in 2014 without Google’s ecosystem is the main reason Google launched SafetyNet. Of course the Fire Phone failed because it wasn’t very good and Amazon didn’t iterate, but I imagine Google didn’t want them or anyone else to try again.
Sometimes people make things that are useful to Google or find bugs for them. It has no meaningful cost to them as long as non-Google Android isn’t appealing to mainstream users.
Huawei and their HarmonyOS would disagree with you on how many users there are on an AOSP variant. It’s a meaningful cost to Google, which is probably what is motivating them to lock down their phones now.
https://medium.com/huawei-developers/what-is-harmonyos-how-it-differs-from-android-e5ea3fc50acc
Huawei was forced to offer non-Google Android due to USA sanctions. I don’t know whether that has created difficulties for them in the Chinese market, but a quick search shows a significant decline in market share in Europe.
I do think Amazon launching an Android phone in 2014 without Google’s ecosystem is the main reason Google launched SafetyNet. Of course the Fire Phone failed because it wasn’t very good and Amazon didn’t iterate, but I imagine Google didn’t want them or anyone else to try again.