Re: It isn't like Google has the only maps
True, I wouldn't really care if my phone switched from Google maps to Here. The trouble is Here don't give their maps away, they sell them.
This is the pact you make with Google if you're a phone maker. They swallow those fees in exchange for the lock-in. Who's going to pay that subscription for an Open Source Android? The phone maker? Maybe but that means the phone needs to be running the phone maker's equivalent of GMS. That's exactly what Samsung were planning of course but they decided against it. That's a good thing too because a different GMS equivalent for each maker would have made Android even more fragmented and difficult to develop for than it is already. Maybe the user could pay them? Except people who have just bought an expensive phone hate getting nickel and dimed, it ruins the critical "Just Works" feeling, and it doesn't address the fragmentation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
