Having developer for Android, I can tell you that Google pushes their libraries hard and make that as default in tutorials, docs etc so most developers end of d

Having developer for Android, I can tell you that Google pushes their libraries hard and make that as default in tutorials, docs etc so most developers end of depending on play services without realizing that is only one of the many options. This is done by design to lock developers in and by proxy, lock users to Google flavored Android OS