The location example is bothersome, but the point about 4.4 adding the storage API to enable Dropbox (a competitor) access to apps and the systems in precisely the same way as Google Drive does demonstrate they aren't nearly as closed as many like to portray them as being. Android has the most pervasive mechanisms of this kind of any widespread system, and the best approach for adding them with applications. This is, by far, the single most underappreciated part of the platform, including by many Googlers outside the Android team.
That said, it pisses me off violently that to get weather from a non-Google source my device still insists that Google get my location data. The location system very much should be pluggable, and it doesn't present the kind of technical hurdles stuff like a generic purchasing API (discussed elsewhere) would.
That said, it pisses me off violently that to get weather from a non-Google source my device still insists that Google get my location data. The location system very much should be pluggable, and it doesn't present the kind of technical hurdles stuff like a generic purchasing API (discussed elsewhere) would.