[padrack]

I heard from a few friends at google that there are pretty intense discussions going on right now about what they can demand from their partners.

They had to bend over backwards for the carriers and manufacturers at first because they were the new kid on a very crowded block. but now they are the market leader and should use that leverage to demand a certain standard for Android units.

[cpeterso]

> now they are the market leader and should use that leverage to demand a certain standard for Android units.

But there is little preventing a manufacturer or carrier from using the open-source (subset!) of Android to produce their own Android-compatible (but not "Google Experience") phones. The manufacturers and carriers actually have an incentive do so they can tout their "differentiated" phones.

[cbs]

>But there is little preventing a manufacturer or carrier from using the open-source (subset!) of Android

Except the losses from maintaining the stack separate from google, and potentially losing the google market might not be covered by the kickbacks for shovelware. The real competition will be if amazon steps up to provide a distro to phone manufactures.