All true, but what does that tell us about any solutions to slow or non-existant updates and fragmentation? What are some of the thousands of solutions? Or are you saying that there never was a problem in the first place?
The issue: apps that are only updated with the OS end up outdated.
The current solution: Move them out of AOSP, into Google's internal projects, distribute updates via the Play Store.
An alternative solution: Move them out of AOSP, onto GitHub, distribute updates via the Play Store.
Yes, Google had to decouple them from AOSP. But that’s no reason not to put the code anywhere else in the open. These issues are entirely orthogonal, and Google uses it as a way to force more people onto the proprietary ones.
Open sourcing Google's apps is not a solution to Android's core problems though. Not every part of the OS that needs to be updated can be moved into open sourced apps.
Also, open sourcing the apps takes away any leverage Google has to recoup the costs of developing Android.
All the apps were open source in the first place. Google Music, Books, Search, the Phone Dialer, the contacts, the SMS app, Google Talk, all of them used to be open source.
It should have been possible for Google to open up much of what they are pushing, but they don't. And i wonder if that has to do with the likes of Amazon and Xiaomi.
A move towards replacing an open OS with an entirely proprietary solution full of tracking by a single vendor is "a step in the right direction"?
There's thousands of solutions for how you can update core OS components, none of them require what Google's doing to open source.