> We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown.
We did guess it. Google were already past their “don’t be evil” days in 2013. They were possibly better than other companies of similar scale, but the decline was already clearly beginning. People had long warned that Google could not be trusted to keep Android open in the long term, that eventually their benevolence would fade. A good chunk of the enthusiasm around Firefox OS was in breaking the duopoly and the idea of a platform that would be much harder to lock down.
Fair point, I think I have to concede that you're right that it was perhaps perceivable at that time. In my defense, I will say that we are seeing some pretty concrete actions out in the wild in 2025 that we were only speculating on in 2013 heightening the urgency of the issue.