I think what bothers people who feel this way (and I'm one of them) is that Google is taking things that Android used to include (like the browser) and moving all future development to closed-source versions, leaving the open-source version stagnant[0].
> Rather the author seems to be trying to redefine "operating system" to include things that have never been a part of such a term before, like online message routing and mapping services.
This doesn't really ring true in the face of what's happened; Google has kept a lot of things proprietary, sure, but they've also moved a lot of things proprietary that weren't before and abandoned the rest. They're making platform improvements in closed-source rather than open-source, making it difficult and impractical for a lot of developers to build apps that will work on Android, rather than 'Android plus Google Play services etc'.
This even includes the keyboard; Google has made improvements to the Android keyboard, but not in AOSP.
Fundamentally, this feels like an attempt to maintain both the user-visible branding (now everything is Google this and Google that, which reminds users that Google had its hand in things) but also to prevent carriers from shipping stock Android and cutting Google out of the loop.
I find the browser complaint funny because they've moved to Chrome which even has an open development model[1] (Android does not). Chrome is also used for the WebView implementation starting in KitKat[2] (made updateable via Play Store in Lollipop). All of this code is open-source and also openly developed (which means code review, bug tracker, mailing lists, design docs are public).
This may seem like pedantry, but neither Chrome for desktop, nor Chrome for Android are open source.
I'd see the main general motivations for something like MicroG as being a sense of trust, privacy, control. As long as even 0.1% of any packaged end-product is closed source, this isn't possible.
> Chrome for Android is derived from Chromium. Since the launch of the first version, we have steadily open sourced all the critical components. You can build various Chromium components for Android as used in Chrome for Android using the instructions here.
Ah, yes the UI was upstreamed only recently. However it was possible to build Chromium on Android either as "content_shell" (minimalistic UI on top of Chromium) or as WebView.
Exactly this, already it seems a little weird now how rose colored people's vision of Google was some ~5-10 years ago (I too was a fan). Give it 5 more and it will be late 90's Microsoft.
> Rather the author seems to be trying to redefine "operating system" to include things that have never been a part of such a term before, like online message routing and mapping services.
This doesn't really ring true in the face of what's happened; Google has kept a lot of things proprietary, sure, but they've also moved a lot of things proprietary that weren't before and abandoned the rest. They're making platform improvements in closed-source rather than open-source, making it difficult and impractical for a lot of developers to build apps that will work on Android, rather than 'Android plus Google Play services etc'.
This even includes the keyboard; Google has made improvements to the Android keyboard, but not in AOSP.
Fundamentally, this feels like an attempt to maintain both the user-visible branding (now everything is Google this and Google that, which reminds users that Google had its hand in things) but also to prevent carriers from shipping stock Android and cutting Google out of the loop.
[0] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...