[fidotron]

The Play Services people would have a stronger case if FB Messenger hadn't outperformed them on so many metrics of this type for years. One of the shocks of Copperhead/Graphene is how the absence of the play service push mechanism radically improves your battery life.

It is definitely the case that doing such things efficiently, especially in the world of evolving radio technology, is beyond the absolutely overwhelming majority of mobile app developers, and apparently in many cases even very good ones. It also seems unlikely that having the platform poll a process to then do the push (as your API would, in response to something like a radio burst about to be made) is a good idea, as keeping the app process asleep if at all possible is distinctly preferable, and most devs struggle with what is a real time constraint. An API to achieve this is definitely buildable though, it does require offloading a certain amount to the platform.

The truth is centralized services are strategic for the platform owner these days, so any technical argument for them will really be on that basis.