Well, I’ll be damned. They finally won one it sounds like.
I don’t know what’s on every phone. But I can confirm those 2 are defaults on some devices through personal experience.
And there are also devices without the Play store by default. Amazon products are probably the best example, but they’re not the only ones.
Don’t get me wrong - Google does some terrible shit. But they’re better than pretty much every other major software company on this issue. All the major game consoles and Apple require the use of their stores exclusively. Microsoft requires the Microsoft store to be installed on any modern Windows machine.
Yeah - the Play Store is the de-facto default and by far the most successful on the platform. And yeah - Google likes it that way and encourages it. But so does everyone else. The difference is that Google is the best actor in this area.
Google allows sideloading. They allow other storefronts. They allow other stores to be installed by default by manufacturers. They allow manufacturers to not include the Play Store. And they allow the removal/disabling of the Play Store by users.
