[itsame]

Minor quibble, but CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard was a glorified UI on top of App Ops that Google had already been developing.

Also, IMHO, it's a bit of a stretch to say that the Google Now shortcut was inspired by PA's Pie controls. One is just a shortcut to an enhanced search feature, and the other is... not unlike iOS's Assistive Touch feature on steroids. The only commonality is that they occur near/around the home button.

EDIT: And in fact, my Galaxy Note II had a "long-press menu button to trigger search" since the dedicated search button was removed -- nothing particularly unique about that paradigm.

While Cyanogen Inc. may well have been Google's biggest "threat" when it came to control of Android, it wasn't even that big a threat to begin with. They were always beholden to Google's source dumps, as was any other ROM distribution. I'd argue little has changed in terms of how much control Google has over Android's destiny, and Cyanogen Inc.'s (impending) death doesn't really move the compass in any meaningful way.

[shade23]

> Minor quibble, but CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard was a glorified UI on top of App Ops that Google had already been developing.

ApOps was removed by google[1] .

I agree with the little has changed bit. But I think we should give them credit for innovating quite a bit on the platform.And with Google's version of the OS, there were little outside options.which will reduce more drastically atleast till all Custom ROMs start forking of LineageOS.

[1]: Minor quibble, but CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard was a glorified UI on top of App Ops that Google had already been developing.

[itsame]

It wasn't removed; it was simply hidden because it was a work-in-progress piece of infrastructure wasn't ready for end-user consumption[1]. The same underlying code was still used by Privacy Guard[2], so it still wasn't CyanogenMod's innovation. App Ops would eventually make a user-facing comeback in 6.0 Marshmallow, with a very similar UI, just with the additional runtime popups for on-demand permissions.

I agree that CyanogenMod did bring innovations to the table -- I'm in no way trying to diminish that. Just clarifying attribution where due.

Speaking more generally, there is no doubt that custom ROMs answered needs/demands that Google just couldn't satisfy in the same timelines. Custom ROMs deserve tons of credit for prototyping and "market testing" concepts/features for Google. The good news is that -- by and large -- most of the low-hanging fruits have already been incorporated back into mainline Android. Nowadays, I've personally found fewer and fewer reasons to use custom ROMs (outside of the ever-important need to extend device lifetime anyway -- probably the biggest thing remaining that Google likely won't ever attempt to satisfy).

[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/11/googler-app-ops-was-...

[2] https://www.xda-developers.com/protecting-your-privacy-app-o...