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Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by tarancato on Saturday October 01, 2016 @02:17PM (#12619154)
>AOSP has been a dead dream for a while now due to carriers locking down phones

That's only in the US.

Let's be honest here, AOSP is a dead dream because porting and maintaining AOSP for a device is kinda complicated. Many people do it for free, but you can't rely on that.

Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by IshKebab on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:12PM (#12619408)
No, AOSP is a dead dream because Google moved essential code into Google Play Services, which isn't open source.
Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by rhodysurf on Saturday October 01, 2016 @08:21PM (#12620493)
You can write plenty of good apps without google play services. Thats hyperbole.
Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by ocdtrekkie on Saturday October 01, 2016 @08:39PM (#12620542)
You can. But since almost nobody does, there's no viable use for a phone without it. Bear in mind, even Microsoft, who was part of starting this investigation against Google... Even Microsoft's apps like Outlook and Skype won't run without Play Services installed and enabled.
Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by tarancato on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:30PM (#12619491)
Essential code such as what? Can't you boot AOSP without installing the Google apps?
Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by IshKebab on Monday October 03, 2016 @03:14PM (#12630412)
You can but a huge number of apps use Google Play Services and you can't use those. I suppose technically you couldn't get them anyway since you don't have Google Play, but anyway.

GPS includes stuff like location services, Firebase, Chromecast, analytics, Google account authentication, Google Drive APIs, all the game stuff, Android Pay, etc.

Re:EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practice... by cwyers on Saturday October 01, 2016 @04:08PM (#12619665)
Essential code for apps written against the platform's official APIs.