The reason it's internal is because system code takes priority over third party libraries given the same package name. If there were any changes to the library,

The reason it's internal is because system code takes priority over third party libraries given the same package name. If there were any changes to the library, you could never use the newest version because it would be dominated by the system version. This is what happened to the Apache HttpClient and why there is a fully repackaged version[1] for people who want to use a newer client than the one in the Android System. [1] https://code.google.com/p/httpclientandroidlib/ https://code.google.com/p/httpclientandroidlib/