You're proving the grandparent's point. Android's "openness" matters only if you want to build your own OS based on Android or you're a system integrator. For users buying Android devices, it's more often than not just as closed platform as any other alternative.
- A way for users to prohibit internet access per application
- no forced installation of the whole Google Play Services, just to get access to the Play Store
- better root management, so that manufacturers can ship access to root to all users
- less politics in the Play Store. Google has for example thrown out 3rd party YouTube apps that offered background playback, because those supposedly violated YouTube ToS with that, shortly before introducing a paid option for background playback in their own YouTube app.
> - better root management, so that manufacturers can ship access to root to all users
Are you sure it is Android problem and not manufacturers decision, because they are afraid to be flooded with warranty issues from broken rooted phones?
> ess politics in the Play Store. Google has for example thrown out 3rd party YouTube apps that offered background playback, because those supposedly violated YouTube ToS with that, shortly before introducing a paid option for background playback in their own YouTube app.
So, these apps are illegal from law standpoint, and make damage to Google. How is this politics?
> Are you sure it is Android problem and not manufacturers decision, because they are afraid to be flooded with warranty issues from broken rooted phones?
I'm dead certain that some manufacturers would still not ship root, but I'm also dead certain that more would do than do right now, if it was officially supported.
> So, these apps are illegal from law standpoint, and make damage to Google.
They're not illegal. It was never trialled whether they're illegal. Google did not sue these app developers and did not have a judge confirm that they actually violate the YouTube ToS. They just threw them out of the Play Store, with the accusation pretty much just for PR reasons.
And I'm sure that they would not have won an actual lawsuit. The point in the YouTube ToS that they accused with, basically said that you're not allowed to separate the audio from the visuals of a YouTube video. Supposedly this was in there, to have something against people pirating music through YouTube.
If this were to suddenly be interpreted as it not being legal to have any way of just listening to YouTube videos without seeing it, then tabbed browsers would be illegal, any sort of multi-tasking-capable operating system would be illegal, it could technically even be illegal for users to not adamantly stare at their screen as soon as they click on a YouTube video.
No judge would push this through and no judge would rule someone guilty for not knowing that all these seemingly accepted uses were apparently different to offering background playback in an Android app.
That Google seems to not think much of their own rules would not have helped the case either.
Android, as is offered to most of the customers, is basically a completely closed platform that just happens to allow you to side-load APKs. It's basically Windows.
For starters - have you tried to use Android without Google Play Services or its reverse engineered open reimplementation, microG? Android with F-Droid is like a completely different runtime platform than Android with Google Play. It might be a nice platform, but it's different - you can't just switch without extreme changes to your habits and apps you use, even if you don't mind installing closed apps. If you say "Android is open", you really mean something completely different than most of Android users think about when hearing "Android". When they hear or say "Android", they think "Google Play's Android".
