Google answer to this is Google Mobile Services, it is proprietary so Google can and does update it, currently about every 6 weeks. Yes not everything is part of this package but with every platform release more functionality is moved into it. GMS runs across every android device after 4.0 (97% of devices).

“In Marshmallow, Google has been forced to use Oracle standard libraries for the Android Run Time meaning that Google has effectively lost control of the software roadmap for the runtime.”

Do you have a source for this? My understanding of the case was that it was about the copyright of the semantics and structure of the Java api. This has nothing to do with ART. ART’S input is bytecode and its output is machine code.

What’s the basis of your bullshit?

Thanks for your interesting article.
About this bulleted list “A proprietary version of Android will allow Google […] to take back control of software updates”
and thise one “RFM estimates that it takes around 4 years for a new version of Android to fully penetrate Google’s ecosystem compared to a matter of months for iOS.” I have one question I often ask myself : What’s the point ?

What is the point for a product releaser (of smartphone, OS, GPS, software) to have ALL his product under the same soft version ? Why is this so important ?
About myself, on my smartphone I can’t install any update (my smartphone is too old) but I keep using it and I’ll do until it’s completely unusable or broken. So I have an outdated product but I can still use it.

So I wonder why is this soooo important for the releasers (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc) to ask us to have the lastest version of their software on our product. In other world, why a fragmented market about version of the same product is so much a nightmare for these companies ? I can’t graps it (else it is for dark purposes as tracking, eavesdropping, …)

If anyone has a clue about that, I should be grateful to understand this mystery ^^

thanks