I don't have time for a big, thoughtful response to either of you, but I can see several things Google should do or should have done. Some of these are going to be Very Difficult, however.
* Curate the Google Play store. Yes, this will hurt. The standards don't need to be as tough or as opaque as Apple's (and I don't think it should be at all), but it needs to happen.
* Licence the "Android" name and vett devices that want to use it. Or something like that. This means that shit Android devices will be told they cannot use the name. At all. They can also use this to help co-erce vendors to keep up with the OS upgrades. This is also hard because it will mean an attempt to put the "open source" genie back in the bottle. It was a great sentiment, but it's not working so well.
I'm sure you could think of other points.
Wade.