this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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You can use Android without Google Play Services and people do, but the vast majority of people using Android use Google Play Services.
I can see that happening to Linux on the desktop if the main driver is Steam.
There's a huge difference between GPS which is effectively a rootkit, and Steam which is a userland application however. To actually remove GPS requires that you have a device with an unlockable bootloader (or an active exploit to gain root privileges) so that you can flash a ROM without it - Steam is one simple uninstall away.
Sure, a monopoly on the gaming market isn't great, and while I hope I don't bite my words anytime soon - Valve/Steam is the lesser of the two evils. Especially if you consider that it wasn't really all that long ago where Linux gaming was an absolutely crazy idea that resulted in the pool of games available to you to be very very small.
For now. But also, phone companies can use Android without GPS, but they have to rebuild a lot of functionally to get it to work, and this was done as a design decision by Google to maintain control over Android. I can easily see Valve doing this in the future. Hell, imagine Valve buying Unity and integrating it to Steam while keeping developer costs low.
My brother in Christ you know not of what you speak