Really? I own a Huawei and AFAICT, the OS / services (eg the kernel, android, Google play services) are basically the same as what would run on eg a Google pixel.

>> > Samsung + Huawei -> Google

> Oh come on. That's some serious reaching to prove your point right there.

On the software front it's right on the mark though. Those devices wouldn't be much without Google. I know that Samsung in particular has had some other platforms (Bada? Tizen?) to try to break that dependency, but correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think it's been successful. AFAIK Google also has some kind of hardware requirements posed on the OEMs, so they influence hardware design this way.

Not in the slightest. Samsung tried to launch products that were rejected by Google via OEM licensing. Their commercial offerings are subject to external rules.

Every company's products are subject to external rules. All these huge companies constantly fight in court over trademarks, intellectual property, and so on. The products were not "rejected by Google", they were rejected by a court somewhere. And Google are at the receiving end of many such cases themselves, in many jurisdictions:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America

Some products don't reach the stage of a public lawsuit, i.e. their fate is determined during private negotiations.