Sorry but what a ridiculous take. There are two phone options in the western world: iphone and android. 99.99% of the people aren't' going to even fathom they could install their own OS on a phone or whatever.

There is a clear MONOPOLY on phones and to even further take away the right to just install something on it is crazy. I already hate Apple for that, but there's no recourse in the monopolistic & capitalistic US and now it's going to be 100% gone.

"it should be fine for Google or Apple to do whatever they want with their OS"

Not when they are a MONOPOLY.

I’d say that it’s more of a cartel. The mobile network operators, the mobile device manufacturers, the mobile OS developers. They all work together in their consortiums to make money together.

It’s a bit obvious when you look at the supply chain where “competitors” supply each other with parts.

RF hardware is heavily regulated by governments, so a truly open-for-consumer hardware solution won’t exist.

When you buy an Android phone, the Stock OS you get is AOSP (the open source Android base) + Google stuff + Manufacturer stuff.

Now it sounds like you don't know about it, but if you take only AOSP and run it on your phone, you will not immediately notice that it is not "a normal Android you expect".

There are alternatives based on AOSP, e.g. GrapheneOS, LineageOS, /e/OS. To 99.99% of the people, those would count as Android. The difference between e.g. a FairPhone Android and a Samsung Android is not smaller than the difference between FairPhone Android and /e/OS.

What I am saying is that we should fight for those alternatives to run properly. Right now you may have heard that "it is not a full replacement because some things don't work". First, few things "don't work" (fewer than you may expect). Second (and more importantly), those few things that "don't work" are not the responsibility of those alternative OSes. It's precisely because Google + Android manufacturers prevent them from working that they don't.

I don't think it is such a ridiculous take. Rather, I feel like you just have no idea about how it works, and therefore you cannot imagine how there are alternatives to the situation you know.