Quote:
Originally Posted by Razeus
Question:
What's it take for someone like Samsung or Facebook to use Android as the background and simply use their own scheme and call it a different OS? Wouldn't this push users NOT to use Google's services? I'm sure doing a search in Facebook is pretty much using Bing, so I'm pretty sure Google will start to have a problem with these moves Facebook/Samsung has taken lately.
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Amazon is already doing something similar with the Kindle Fire. It uses Android as a base but with their own separate development path; a fork. It means that they can do whatever they want with the code, but they're basically on their own.
I think Google blocks Play Store access from forked versions since it could create compatibility issues, but I assume also to discourage forked versions as they move away from Google's ecosystem. Amazon have their own app store with it's own publishing and licensing system. So more work for Android developers who already have to worry about tons of phones with different hardware configurations.