> I think the majority of American consumers and developers use iOS and they have little to no problem with the highly controlled and monopolized system.

Those users knew in advance what they were buying into, since Apple was honest about the nature of the platform they were offering for sale.

Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to -- and it's solely Google's fault that Google lied about Android being both open to running any software you like and open source.

Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.

> Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to

They were, but I think for most users this is a sort of technical lie that they don't really care about, like if a restaurant says you can choose one of these four side dishes and when you ask for the onion rings they say they're out. I'm often hair-raisingly stunned at how little concern, or even awareness, people have about issues of privacy and user control.

> Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.

No, people needed to speak up long before then. They needed to speak up as soon as the iOS/Android duopoly began to emerge, as soon as advertising began to shift to Facebook, as soon as brick-and-mortar video rental stores started to close, and a million other things like that. The issue is that we have allowed a small number of companies to control too much infrastructure that too many people depend on too much. With that power they will find a way to screw us. If it wasn't this it would have been something else, and if there are workarounds or walkbacks on this it will still be something else later. The only way forward is wholesale dismantling of the system that has led to this. Unfortunately a lot of people would rather have convenience.