True, but I do wonder about the future of that. It's a licensed Google product, and I'm sure Google Services would have little trouble detecting unlicensed devices.

I don't think Google would have any reason to prevent the services from running on a random device, would they? Seems like the more endpoints running their applications, the more data they collect and the more ads they can serve.

they do block emulators

That's a special case though, emulators are not real devices that would likely generate bad data for their purposes.

Yes, but just like Microsoft did in the 90s, they'll happily let people "pirate" them to reach a dominant position. Once they have >90% of the market, they can introduce Genuine Advantage.