Everything is on a spectrum, they are further siloing off hardware from software and cutting out some spaghetti code between the two. Before hardware manufacturers had to merge in google's code with theirs before they release, with proper segregation google's aim with the project is to make a clean cut between the two so that kernel and up aren't so tightly coupled and they can upgrade their OS without breaking the hardware.
Further than they siloed it before, yes. In comparison to the competition (which sadly withdrew for other reasons), they are extremely far behind: Windows ME worked fine with hardware and drivers from Windows 95. But the whole problem is the consequence of Linux not having a stable driver interface.
