1a) If the issue can be fixed and/or worked around in Play Services, Google does that and "everyone" gets the fix without even having to explicitly install it.
3b) For each OEM, if the problem can be fixed/worked around by updating the apps and/or frameworks they publish via the Play Store, they do that (if only for the sake of new and upcoming devices) and all of their customers get it once they install those update.
Those cover a large (and growing, because Google and the OEMs are both aligned on this) chunk of your "left hanging" users.