The beauty of Android is that you *can* customize it to your liking, adding apps, launchers, widgets, etc - you can make it the device *you* want it to be. This same openness allows carriers and manufacturers to muck it up before it even gets into your hands. The more they do this, the more disjointed the Android experience will become, until there is no such thing as an Android experience.
Some time before getting my Droid, I had a Blackberry Curve. When I was looking at the Droid at launch time, I also looked at the Blackberry Storm 2 which had been recently released. One of the deciding factors was my prior experience with a Blackberry - I knew what the Blackberry experience was, and aside from getting my first touchscreen phone, I knew all I needed to know about the Storm 2. If I believed my Blackberry experience to have been positive, I would have gone with the Storm 2 without hesitation. However, when it's time for me to move on from my Droid, I'll have to look carefully at what's available, and see how the carriers and manufacturers have screwed things up. If there are any true Android phones left, I'll likely go in that direction, but if carriers and manufacturers continue in the direction they're headed, that won't be the case, and I could easily move to another platform.
I agree with the author of the article; Google needs to attach some requirements to Android. This should include non-removal of core features, easy removal of anything else, no restrictions on access to hardware components, and no blocking access to services by non-carrier/non-manufacturer apps.
