[realusername]

The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control.

[surajrmal]

Under what law is that a legal or ethical thing to do? Why not suggest ios be taken away from Apple as well and windows from Microsoft?

[rezonant]

I'd be fine with that too

[treyd]

Those things should also happen. Users shouldn't be forced to choose between 2 dictators to drop their pants for.

[Terr_]

Can you be more specific on exactly what "that" you are thinking of which would be illegal or unethical?

Parent-poster just referenced past/future legislation in general.

[realusername]

I also suggest that indeed, if you can't avoid those companies it means it's time for antitrust

[Tharre]

Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants.

The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.

[Balinares]

I'm thinking with ever increasing seriousness: let's split any company that grows past a certain size. Each side gets a copy of the codebase and half the assets, no one who's been on the board on one side can be on the other side's board, and neither side can buy off the other. They can use the existing branding for a limited time and with a qualifier (say Google Turnip vs Google Potato) but after that it's on the strength of the new brand which they're each building and for which they're competing against each other and the rest of the market.

This is not happening in my lifetime, of course it isn't. But by god does it need to happen.

[iririririr]

I welcome feature stagnation on mobile!

Every single release is a step backwards.

Android 15 cannot hold a candle to what cynogenmod did on top of android 2.3. And that's objective.