No matter the manufacturer, every Android phone has one thing in common: its software base. Manufacturers can heavily customize the look and feel of the Android OS they ship on their Android devices, but under the hood, the core system functionality is derived from the same open-source foundation: the Android Open Source Project. After over 16 years, Google is making big changes to how it develops the open source version of Android in an effort to streamline its development.
In case people missed or are unaware of the context:
https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/doj-google-must-divest-chrome-possibly-android-google-fires-back
https://www.howtogeek.com/united-states-doj-google-android-chrome-split/
The DoJ recently (before Trump got elected) won an anti-trust lawsuit against Google, and the lawsuit is currently in the stage of haggling over the extent of the penalty actions taken against Google as a result.
One of the things the DoJ is pushing for is breaking off not only Chrome but also Android from Google to just leave Google with its search stuff.
This is like splitting up Bell from decades ago.
What Google is doing right now is strategic positioning to be able to argue that Android can’t be split off from Google without causing them too much pain, and by making Android more and more dependent on, and nonfunctional without being under the same corporate ownership.
This is a powerplay to try to not be broken up so hard by the anti-trust lawsuit they already lost.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
The actual penalty ruling is expected to come down by August 2025… unless the Trump admin fucks with it, somehow they… haven’t seemed to yet notice or care that this lawsuit is going on, despite Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, having a literal front row seat at Trump’s inauguration.
Thank you for putting this together
No problem!
Wonderful username btw, haha.