It's probably better to think of that as AT&T trying to continue the thing they were already doing with feature phones, than as Google trying to make Android as locked down as iOS is.
For starters, it's something AT&T did with just the phones they were selling, not something Google did with the Android platform or Android phone makers like LG and Samsung did with their phones.
True, and more specifically it was AT&T making their early Android phones into Android iPhones. This was still pretty close to the era when the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive. It was terrible and I believe they sold pretty poorly.
My point is that the mumblemumble seemed to think that Google had no choice in the matter. I think they clearly did and for the most part clearly opted to keep the third party door open at the time.
Granted, Android was much more open back then overall.
My point wasn't exactly that they had no choice, so much as it was a choice they quite understandably weren't going to make.
The AT&T analogy is kind of weak here because they weren't operating in the same business environment. AT&T was doing it in a B2C context, Google's Android business at the time was 100% B2B. It's easier to take this kind of risk as a major telecom operating in a B2C context, because consumers, as a body, aren't going to punish you that badly. Case in point was that, while these Android phones sold poorly, it hasn't actually tanked AT&T's business.
Whereas, if Google had sent Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc over to WebOS or wherever, the impact to Google's Android business would have been large and permanent.
I get your point, but I have a hard time seeing Samsung, LG, and Huawei demanding that consumers have a checkbox to install third party apps. I've never gotten the impression that they actually care about that ability for their consumers.
Obviously having it for themselves was a key selling point.
For starters, it's something AT&T did with just the phones they were selling, not something Google did with the Android platform or Android phone makers like LG and Samsung did with their phones.