Why? You have many examples throughout history when an overconfident manufacturer lost their momentum before they even realized it. I mean, take Sony for example. They had the best product but completely ignored public's demand for MP3 and thought they could peddle their own proprietary shit forever. People's private sentiment towards product/brand can change simultaneously en masse often without notice to the manufacturer. Especially if something better comes along out of the sudden — and it usually does.
I have been an Apple fanboy for 10 years and their recent abysmal software quality and complete lack of the 'final touch' they've been known for made me go back to Linux and Android. Because there I can at list fix those annoying bugs myself — or at the very least, I can have them reported publicly for visibility.
I went from an advocate to 'fuck that shit' in 6 months, and if I recall it was one annoying bug too many that was the tipping point. I have a feeling many people share a similar experience roughly at the same time. And I actually think same thing is happening with Windows. So why not Android, too?
So yeah, I think companies can absolutely inadvertently reach a tipping point with one of those seemingly benign decisions.
I'll be moving off a google phone running GrapheneOS to Apple on my next phone refresh because of this, how is this not Google shooting themselves in the foot?
GrapheneOS is doing well and has an OEM partnership for devices launching in 2027. The switch to 2 major releases per year applies to both the Android Open Source Project and non-Pixel stock operating systems. Non-Pixel OEMs weren't shipping the quarterly releases but rather at most the yearly ones, usually with massive delays. Google is trying to get them to ship 2 releases per year on time instead. They gave up on getting them to ship 4 releases. It's not clear if the stock Pixel OS will continue having 4 major releases per year, but it's clear that if it does that the 2 other OEMs are meant to ship will have more changes. Bear in mind they only had 1 major release per year until trunk-based quarterly releases began with Android 14 QPR2. Android 16 QPR1 being pushed to AOSP delayed until almost right before Android 16 QPR2 was released to AOSP on launch day, they already came close to implementing the new policy in practice without telling anyone about it. The whole thing appears to be due to massive cost cutting for Android and ChromeOS. Android 16 QPR1 appears to have been delayed for AOSP due to major bugs in the code which they worked around for Pixels.
Everything at Google is going downhill due to cost cutting, not specifically this. It's more of a neutral thing for GrapheneOS than a bad thing since it presents a lot of opportunities too. Google is likely to lose control of Android via antitrust action but whether that ends up better for open source is an open question.
