Certainly around 2010 I had Google folks saying things at conferences like "who wants root on their phone!"; I do think they saw the idea of user control of the

Certainly around 2010 I had Google folks saying things at conferences like "who wants root on their phone!"; I do think they saw the idea of user control of their phone, hardware diversity and so on as key selling points at that time. They have pulled back from that drastically, to the point where root doesn't really get you much control on an Android device any more. Whether that's driven by discovering that a very open approach to user control makes for a lot of security issues (which lines up with Apple's claims), or whether its about trying to improve revenue streams, well, who knows?