Android basically ran a long bait and switch game. It came out as open source, achieved wide adoption, important online services like banking and government-related moved to it.
Now they are locking it all down.
Now they are locking it all down.
And it seems to be that Google is increasingly regretting that decision and closing things down bit by bit, from Play store policy, all the Play services BS, to how they ship security patches, and now all the developer verification. Google discovers that it's easier to make money if they just control everything.
As everything else, especially anything with a GPL license, has been removed already, with exception of the Linux kernel.
Linux.com refers to the kernel itself as an OS though, I think to relate to people who have only heard of OSes like Windows. And calls Android a platform based on the Linux OS :S