>While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you.
And we still have to see if other browsers will block the Topics API spyware or not.
As for the Topics API, It looks like to be a new copy of FLOC, which flopped immediately on release, as no body adopted it other than chrome.
This is an excellent test of Google's ability to just push a very unpopular feature into Chromium derivatives.
Google has a lot of control over chromium, but I don't think its even close to how gimped AOSP is compared to Android google edition.
They set the toggle to false and deactivated any of the options to turn it back on. That's very different from removing a feature (or maintaining a legacy feature).
The only code they changed was UX-related and a single default.