They’re locking down their ecosystem, have lost faith in a portion of their userbase, and they can’t put advertisements on a launcher they can’t control.
Sound familiar?
If they try to do it, they’ll only be able to do it on Pixel phones. They could theoretically force other manufacturers to use a specific launcher, but all that’ll do is piss them off and have android forked. It’ll achieve nothing.
The antitrust lawsuits would quickly pile in as well, Google would not have a leg to stand on. Comparing Google to Reddit is comparing Apples to Dinosaurs.
If they try to do it, they’ll only be able to do it on Pixel phones.
I don’t know who was responsible for getting rid of native gestures (Quickswitch) when using fullscreen gestures, but because of this move I effectively stopped using 3rd party launchers, especially Nova Launcher, known for not supporting Quickswitch.
I only use Pixel Launcher Extended, which fixes many annoyances of Pixel Launcher.
They have been diminishing 3rd party launchers with various updates already. Multitasking gestures broke various things and didn’t work well with third party launchers - I think the animations still don’t work. The toolbar they added for foldables and tablets only works with the built in launcher. The last one sucks because Samsung made one for the Fold prior to that which was launcher agnostic (was better too imo).
That said, things are still pretty great and it’s one thing I hope they never kill off as it allows a crazy amount of customization and personalization. Without it, fuck me might as well get an Apple (well maybe not).
In what way would Google profit from restricting 3rd party launchers? I can see why Twitter and Reddit want to charge access for 3rd party apps. Profit. Lots of profit. I don’t see where Google would have anything to gain from restricting a very significant customization option in Android.