[zepto]

Certainly some of the apps and especially services are considered part of the operating system by most people.

You only have to look elsewhere in this thread to see all of the features which have been moved out of AOSP into Google Play Services to see this proved.

[chromedev]

So you're suggesting that without Google specific proprietary apps and services that Android doesn't boot up and the phone can't be used with third-party apps?

[zepto]

Third party apps won’t work if they rely on Google play services as many do.

Whether it boots or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t do what people expect a smartphone OS to do.