A pretty well written analysis. I think the author is mistaken on two important points though.
The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn't be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there's already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.
Secondly, the author complains that:
> More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop.
There's a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google's effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...
[1] https://microg.org/
The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn't be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there's already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.
Secondly, the author complains that:
> More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop.
There's a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google's effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...
[1] https://microg.org/