[Hithredin]

It feels like Play Services is for Google to own valuable features privately over an open source OS.

Not about version support.

[oblio]

My guess is that it's used to attack in two directions:

1. Control on top of the Open Source OS. 2. Hollowing out the OS so that OEMs/carriers have reduced controls over updates/lifecycles, etc.

1 is bad, 2 is arguably good.