Android would be dead in the water today if it wasn't for Play Services. Developing for Android is still painful today because but Play Services at least meant

Android would be dead in the water today if it wasn't for Play Services. Developing for Android is still painful today because but Play Services at least meant that you could expect a certain range of features spanning multiple major releases of Android. I'm pretty sure that Play Services wasn't something Google really wanted to have but were forced to implement because so many OEMs just shit the bed w/r/t their Android forks.