[anilgulecha]

It's not going to be completely at Google's whim, as disabling a certain API/interface means older proper-android devices will also fail. So microg is banking on it's API interface being fine, given Google's interface, for business reasons, has to be fine.

[amelius]

But isn't Google auto-updating on all devices, including old ones?

[Arnt]

Only mostly.

I don't know why. Lack of space on some phones maybe, or they could be configured to autoupdate via wifi only but never see wifi. Whatever the reason, if you use google play services, you'll see a few devices with old versions that don't update even though there is a newer version for that OS version.

[s17n]

This allows developers to use new api calls and have their apps work on old devices, it doesn't let google break existing apis without breaking apps. They aren't like recompiling the whole play store against every new google play services build or something.