Smart move by google. Potentially they've regained control of their platform past, present and future... In one fell swoop they can resolve fragmentation, keep

Smart move by google. Potentially they've regained control of their platform past, present and future... In one fell swoop they can resolve fragmentation, keep everyone up to date on functionality/APIs, bypass OEM/carrier update issues (be it carrier QA, OEM lack of interest, or just crapware). Most importantly google can keep any OEM's (ie samsung) in check and prevent them branching away from android. The downsides: what happens when google break an entire range of phones/functionality with an update? Are they going to QA every android product in existence? Will older models slow down and become unusable as the baseline resource requirements increase? (I'm looking at you IOS7)...