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“To me, closed isn’t anything that doesn’t have total freedom,” Laurs told me. “By that definition, Android is already closed.”

Laurs has some bold predictions for 2012. He believes Google will start to exert a tighter control over Android, restricting what kinds of apps are developed and what technologies they can use.

“You can’t blame a company for getting as much as power as it can get,” he said. “If I were Google, it’s what I would do.”

He calls the 30 percent cut of the revenue generated from apps paid out to Google a tax on developers. The cut is supposed to account for Google hosting the app, running it on the Android Marketplace, and handling the transaction. While that may be great for some smaller developers, he said larger players may not necessarily need all of those services, and could manage the apps on their own for a lower price.

Laurs said the 30 percent cut is an industry standard only because Apple, which runs a closed system, dictates it.

Laurs isn’t without his own biases. His company, GetJar, is an independent app store that in many ways competes with Android’s own marketplace. The company has worked hard just to ensure Android phones are able to download apps from sources outside of Android’s store, something a few of the wireless carriers have played along with.

But GetJar has seen significant traffic, having crossed 2 billion app downloads in August, and 100 million downloads a month.

Google, for its part, has always maintained that Android is an open system, and points to the number of varied vendors and developers that use the platform. The company, to its credit, has been able to draw a diverse mix of partners.

But Google’s reputation for openness isn’t without its question marks. Over the past year, the company has been battling allegations from Skyhook, a private provider of service that help phones locate their position, that it muscled it out of a partnership with Motorola. Google has denied any wrongdoing, and claimed Skyhook didn’t meet Android’s technical requirements.

On Wednesday, visual voicemail company YouMail complained that its app was completely pulled from Android Market because of a request from T-Mobile. YouMail later found out a version of its app was in fact unnecessarily hurting T-Mobile’s network, and after some tweaking, said it was coming back. But the company still took exception to Google pulling the app completely when only one carrier made the request.

The process may be gradual, but Laurs sees Google exerting more control. The acquisition of Motorola is another step, he said, adding the company could always threaten to give Motorola the latest version of Android to maintain control of its partners. Google has said it would treat Motorola the same as any other vendor partner.

Android’s dominance is poised to continue. Laurs said by next year, it should surpass Apple as the destination of choice for developers, adding that he expects a number of Android-exclusive apps to pop up.