You're talking about support for Pixels, not issues with AOSP. If we didn't support Pixels, none of that would be relevant, and we don't intend to support Pixels in the long-term. We're using them until we have better options available, and ideally we'd have input into making it.
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is it fair to say that it's more difficult than it need be to get GrapheneOS to run on Google's Pixel product line? Or that there have been vendor-specific barriers that favor Google's own builds of Android? These are the questions from an anti-competitive practices standpoint.
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The anti-competitive practices are around requiring that Google services need to be built into the OS with privileges unavailable to third party apps. They encourage apps to depend on APIs provided by Play services. The problem is it's not just a set of libraries for apps to use.
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That is a major issue. Also, forcing vendors to agree to CTS / CDD compliance for Android-based operating systems without Play services is anti-competitive and a major issue. GrapheneOS deliberately deviates from the Android CTS / CDD when it doesn't make sense for us.
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Vendors licensing Play services are not allowed to release a device based on AOSP that does not have CTS / CDD compliance. It's one thing to require it to ship their apps / services and use their branding, but what they do is way beyond that and is definitely anti-competitive.
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Google makes changes to the CTS and CDD with each major release of Android that are not compliant with the previous version of the CTS and CDD.
Anyway, these things are anti-competitive. Don't see how their lack of good support for people targeting their Pixel phones qualifies.
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If a court wants to do something useful, they should force Google to make Play services into something that can be installed by users on Android compliant device as a regular set of apps without it having any special privileges not available to other service providers.
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For example, it should be possible for Amazon and other providers to provide an equivalent to FCM on Android and APNS on iOS with the same capabilities and UX. Google and Apple services should not be allowed to cheat by requiring privileges users can't grant to other services.
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I don't have much confidence in a court actually doing something to address the actual anti-competitive situation, which is based around Play services. They should be forced to turn Google services into regular apps where other providers can do everything that they can do too.
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That means they need to redesign it to stop needing so many special privileges, and where those are actually required, make it possible for users to choose another provider, such as another push notification service. Push should be an open standard with a user chosen server.
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Apple is a lot worse in this regard than Google. At least it's actually possible to do push on Android without FCM, but the UX isn't as good, and apps have to go out of the way to do it. Play Store also largely forbids doing it, but users can sideload apps, so it's not as bad.