“Oneplus Execs reached out today [...] this is OnePlus-initated request for sustainable long term growth,” reads part of an internal Google email about OnePlus’ decision not to preinstall the app.

Epic’s attorney made this sound like a forced / bribed choice, and while that’s still within the realm of possibility based on what we’ve heard, it seems more complicated than that.

Google also says that OEMs can put some phones in its Premier tier (eligible for full rev share) and other phones in a different tier — and that 95 percent of Android phones in the US are not part of the Premier tier, so nothing prevents them from preloading a non-Google app store on those phones if they wanted to.