> Let's be honest and admit that the only reason to prevent users from rooting their phones is to protect companies' profits by ensuring users can't fight back against the blatant tracking, data mining, and analytics capture which is so valuable to companies.

I'm with you on the general sentiment, but how do the companies that block rooting benefit from any of the nefarious activities you mentioned? Those are executed by different organizations, typically.

They benefit from user buying a new phone when they stop providing updates for it. If the bootloader can be unlocked, the community can take over support & the device will be used for longer. Kinda like a 10+ old laptop is perfectly functional and usually fully supported by moder Linux distros, but 10 year old phone is more often than not a paperweight.

First party apps, carrots and sticks from large players like alphabet and meta, pressure from banks, pressure from governments.