Because writing a whole OS from scratch competing with giant companies and having to somehow magically go from 0 to a million apps (while being unpopular due to the few apps) is a good place to be in?

Instead, they could have gotten all the Android apps and the popularity of Android essentially for free.

It's even possible they could have overtaken Google and became the effective steward of the Android platform, since Google doesn't offer a version that can be installed by users and also doesn't offer their version to OEMs with no strings attached.

Again, they still can do that now, since there still isn't a version of Android that runs on any phone other than LineageOS, which is relatively underfunded.

[obviously what Mozilla would gain from this is market share for Firefox for Android]

Who on earth wants an android phone but is waiting for a fork from some random company before they make the switch? Your argument applies to approximately nobody. If someone wants an android phone right now they can pick from literally thousands of devices.

On the other hand, I'm already a KaiOS customer because they power the phone I want: the one that makes calls and handles text messages, and then gives me a high-speed network for my computer. I spend about a quarter of my time in India; while there I got a Jio phone and liked it so much I found a KaiOS device that works in the US as well.

>Instead, they could have gotten all the Android apps and the popularity of Android essentially for free.

No they wouldn't have. They would not get Google Play Services and your MicroG "solution" is ridiculous from a commercial perspective and a violation from a TOS perspective that would be shut down by Google.

>It's even possible they could have overtaken Google and became the effective steward of the Android platform

I don't think you understand the army of developers it takes to maintain and enhance Android on an annual basis nor the millions of dollars it costs Google. To even suggest that they would have overtaken Google and become the steward of the Android platform is ridiculous.

> They would not get Google Play Services

If I have Firefox and thus can load up any Google web page, do I need Google Play Services?

As a strange event, I actually upvoted bitmapbrother, we agreed on something! As he says, MicroG is a hack, and there's no reasonable point where someone is going to take stewardship of Android away from Google. (Other than antimonopoly action.)

There's no point in having Android if you can't run Android apps, and most Android apps users want are now dependent on Google's proprietary libraries (Play Services). So why would you want an Android fork if you aren't going to be able to run Android apps? Might as well go with KaiOS at that point.

What does a browser have to do with Google Play Services? Google Play Services, like the name implies, supplies services to apps and games. Without these services a large majority of apps that rely on them will cease to work on an Android phone without Google Play Services.

I was thinking that with a browser the need for on-phone apps is significantly reduced.

If one does want or need native apps (e.g. for security), then is it possible for a third party to emulate Google Play Services? Or do they use a certificate to prevent third-party clones?