The problem with android on the whole is that it got good enough, quick enough that it prevented any meaningfully open and consumer friendly alternatives to emerge. Safety net is a part of the play services, which on the whole is opaque and binary. So not much is new there.
Also it wore the skin of a free, open platform pretty well for quite a long while. It was only after it got popular that Google started subverting that and turning it into the creature it currently is.
