This seems fairly reminiscent of video card vendors. They're built on a single platform, but if they screw up the card, nVidia or ATI gets the blame. And the sa

This seems fairly reminiscent of video card vendors. They're built on a single platform, but if they screw up the card, nVidia or ATI gets the blame. And the same issue with Windows. Sure, it could be a terrible scanner driver, but it's easier to just blame what's visible. Multiple vendors means that the blame gets shifted to whoever holds the most mindshare. In this case, it's Google, since they're trying to provide both a platform, and a brand. Apple pulls it off through vertical integration, and their version of OSS is providing a big box of parts you can strap together to build your own, not to post-mod their thing. It removes all doubt of who's doing what. Personally, I don't think it's that big of an issue if Google has to alpha/beta it in private before releasing to the general dev community. It's just somewhat snide to use complete and total openness as a selling point, when it's simply unfeasible to be completely open on technical, marketing and design standpoints from day one.