But it's their platform. Maybe they don't care today but how do you know they, or the carriers wont care tomorrow? That risk seems at least as big as Apple going back on today's announcement (for the record, I would view both small).
What if the world ends tomorrow and you spent your last hours doing nothing but debating hypotheticals? That would be a shame, so you should just stop now.
The difference is that Apple has enacted many policies that limit developers while Google has, to my knowledge, never done anything of the sort. In fact, it seems like they go out of their way to be fair to developers (for instance: every app they built for Android uses only the APIs that are available to everyone).
Edit: My point is that Google has never shown an inclination towards policies like these, and I think it's reasonable to expect that not to change.
Google doesn't let you release an app that allows wifi tethering without rooting your phone. I'm sure there are other examples. Google/Apple = the same. They all bow before the carrier gods.
Edit: I can't reply to the child for some reason (too deep), but I just wanted to let you know that you're wrong: 2.2 as distributed by Verizon does not have tethering unless you use their carrier replaced version which bills your account for additional fees.
And how is that Google's fault? Are you going to blame the locked NAND and signed bootloader on Google too? Carriers locking down Android is just as bad a reason to blame Google as faulting iOS for not having tethering is (considering that the OS has been capable for a long time but ATT drug their feet).
What? It is Google's fault that they allow carrier lockdown. It's their platform. They could say if you do X, no Google Android apps allowed. They have already done that, for certain values of X; extending X to include carrier lockdown is certainly a possibility.
That Apple didn't make allowing tethering a deal breaker in their negotiations with ATT was Apple's decision and goes to what Mr. Jobs views/ed as a market requirement. The iPhone seems to have done alright without tethering.
It's built into Android 2.2. Additionally, if you can think of a way of exposing the ability to wifi tether, without requiring root that doesn't fundamentally compromise the security of the underlying Linux system... well I think there would be a lot of Linux gurus who would be quite intrigued.
