[mkr-hn]

I've always been conflicted about that. They started down that path in response to intransigent OEMs leaving people with year old phones full of vulnerabilities, but it's turned into a justification to load all the important userspace into apps they control.

On the one hand, it's great that old phones see some updates. On the other, it's terrible that Google used it as an excuse to reject and weaken the very ecosystem that propelled them to where they are.

They've made some efforts to improve the ease of updating older phones for both OEMs and users, but they keep key components locked down.