> Fair point, but AFAIK Android was never released as an open source project until it was Google owned.

Since we're both being pedantic here, I never said that it was. :) I believe the GP did though (the person you were initially replying to, that is).

> Many proprietary components that are now part of Google Play Services have existed seperately for longer than the "Play" brand had

You're right, and that's one of the things that bothers me about Android's reputation for being an "open" or "open source friendly" OS. Yes, AOSP is open source software (if you leave out the binary blobs necessary for the radios and GPU to work), but even plain vanilla Android as shipped by Google is far from open source. Google has steadily been moving towards a closed/locked down model in many of their projects.