[yourboirusty]

Making an open ecosystem will never be in the best interest of their shareholders. They didn't make it to the top of Wall Street by accident.

Why would they make profit on their hardware alone if they can have an almost passive income in the form of an app store.

They'll put as many scary pop-ups as they can to prevent a regular user from installing third party software as they can. They'll block third party developers from integrating with their ecosystem as much as they can get away with.

It'll be really interesting to see how much EU can influence them, but I wouldn't hold my breath to see them doing more than absolute bare legal minimum.

[walterbell]

> Why would they make profit on their hardware alone if they can have an almost passive income in the form of an app store.

Why not both? Google is offering Android app store _and_ Debian Linux packages. Each distribution mechanism meets different needs.

[rchaud]

Google's ads business dwarfs everything else, so as long as ads can be integrated into apps deployed through Google Play Services, they're happy.

Third party app stores mostly provide unprofitable utility apps Google aren't interested in stopping. And thank goodness for that, because it allows any Android phone to be used as a relatively open computing device without having to register with Play Services.