They can make some specific features of any forks useless, not all of them as the FlOC situation has demonstrated. But the same is true for features of alternative browser engines that don't gain enough market share.

This stuff isn’t that big of a deal in the overall scope. Not when compared to seeing how Google controls Android which has a longer history of others trying to get away from it. It didn’t work. Android is even more entrenched in most of the world sans China.

These sorts of arguments probably help cement Google’s power. By giving the guise that the open source part of the equation can be the key to usurping Google’s power. Instead of it mostly being the other way around.

It would not be surprising if Google loves these tiny changes from Chrome and Android. So the discussions and sentiment never get close to how bad it got for IE or other monopolies and dangers of power.

I think Android is very different, because the open source parts of Android (AOSP) do not constitute a viable OS on their own. The entirety of what we know as Android is simply not open source.

To make matters worse, Google has put in place some legal roadblocks against device vendors using AOSP in markets where others can fill in for some of the proprietary Google parts.

These requirements are subject to regulatory action and I'm almost 100% certain that they will be deemed anticompetitive and therefore illegal.