Less conspiratorial answer (better late than never):

Google services, integrity hardening:

From outside it might be difficult to understand the distinction, but Google is acting here as the owner and maintainer of a services ecosystem, which is the entire Google service-package provided to end-users. For them, Android is provided as a foundation for that package, and they increasingly experience difficulty to contain issues within that ecosystem and prevent them from spreading (piracy, malware, hacking,...).

The logical way out for them to contain those issues is to ensure that members of this ecosystem (=Devices with Google Services, Developers) are vetted more strongly.

Now Android has a history to be an open ecosystem, which allowed it to grow to the size it has now. But similar to the bootloader-unlock situation of device-vendors, the economic incentive of an "open ecosystem" keeps shrinking in comparison to the risks and issues it's causing Google in governing their services-ecosystem.

They obviously decided now that the price they have to pay for that "open ecosystem" (less control over the services ecosystem) is not justified anymore.

Now they have little room to move. In order to preserve that "open ecosystem", they would have to provide the user an option to disable Google Services entirely. But Google services are such a integral part of the OS-experience already that it which would turn the device almost into a completely separate product, different from the product the vendor initially built and the consumer initially purchased.

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I don't expect this to be properly resolved for the sake of "pleasing the community". Products and Services are already so tightly combined in the Smartphone-space that it's hard for most to even understand what it is the user actually purchased when he bought the device.

Now Google the service provider starts to change the users' device in order to maintain his services, and there is no up-to-date definition to what degree they are actually allowed to do this.

How to change that: The underlying customer-protection framework is missing. A solution would be a general legally binding definition of what functions a customer owns if (and when) a device is stripped of any services on top.

If my car loses functions once it loses connection to the manufacturer, this bare set should be communicated as the purchased value ("in exchange for your money"), separately from any on-top ("in exchange for your data") business-model.

In theory this could create competition on the actual purchased value again, instead of continuing to offload the value from the device to some service provided by the vendor/service-provider...

But that's such a complex topic, the implications should be studied much deeper. Also, I don't expect political bodies to fully understand it for years to come, leave alone create a proper case to get the required voting and decision...

> Google is acting here as the owner and maintainer of a services ecosystem... > they increasingly experience difficulty to contain issues within that ecosystem and prevent them from spreading (piracy, malware, hacking,...)

I wonder if the smartphone app industry is big enough now that allowing just two corporates to govern them is no longer fair or democratic.

It has outgrown the "ecosystem" word a long time ago. It's a genuine industry now.

Apps are such a fundamental part of most people's lives now (whether they like it or not), and these two companies have a disproportionate amount of power over an entire industry.