[jokoon]

> So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others.

How so?

> you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps.

> As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services

Most, so you mean it's still possible to not depend on google play services. Although of course, app developers will always prefer the play store as it's the only way for them to make money in a reliable way.

> for basic functions like location.

What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that.

Even with all those problems, the main one being that app developers want to make money by participating to the ad ecosystem or with microtransactions, to me it doesn't seem like android is completely tied to the google ecosystem.

[ocdtrekkie]

> What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that.

So, basically, an app has to import the location functionality it wants to use: android.location is such an API, and when Android first came out, most apps used it to get location information. However, most apps on Android now import Google Location Services instead from com.google.android.gms:play-services-location which only works on a Google-flavored Android device signed into a Google account.

If an app is written for the latter, it won't be able to work on a forked Android device, because the dependency it uses to get location information is missing, regardless of the presence of the physical GPS chip.

As an example, back when I had Android, I found I couldn't use Skype without having Play Services on the device. Even Microsoft, Google's direct competitor, didn't ship Android apps that would work without Google's proprietary components.

[Mediterraneo10]

> What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that.

In many everyday instances, the phone won't quickly get a signal from GPS satellites, rather it relies on network-assisted GPS. Even the open-source Android distribution (AOSP) uses Google's servers. It used to be straightforward for phone owners to switch to a different location assistance service like Mozilla's just by installing from F-Droid and then changing a setting. However, in a subsequent Android version Google made a change to require location-assistance services to be installed as a system package, not a user package. That requires connecting to the phone over ADB and using the shell, which means that only a tiny, tiny minority of techies will ever do it. That is just one example of how, over time, Google has made design changes to Android to benefit itself at the expense of privacy and competition.