[blinkingled]

That is already not a problem on Android. If you can install a 3rd party app store (and you already can install a bunch of these on Android) and don't use Google Play Services your app will still work. For e.g. Amazon Appstore ships lots of the same apps but without using Google Play Services.

[NeveHanter]

Well, no, many apps require Google Play Services/Google Play Framework to work, I can use MicroG (https://microg.org/) with the spoofing enabled but this is unofficial thing and not everything works with that.

[izacus]

And many apps don't work without Apple iOS being present on device and many apps don't work without Windows being present on device, etc.

Play Services are core OS API just like Apple services are.

[jcfrei]

Play Services is probably the worlds most expansive data collection and user tracking tool. Tying core OS APIs into it is just evil.

[tristan957]

They are pretty obviously not core OS API if you don't need them.

[foepys]

Google's push notification framework is baked into the kernel. There is no way to make a competing framework as efficient as Google's solution in Android, so next to no app supports something else.

Every app you see working without Google's tools is simply using good old long polling or periodically looks for new messages. Both are very inefficient and slow.