Yes it seems that for discount Y travellers the OW links are becoming very weak.

Many of the changes announced in the past 6 months do not affect the pointy end people as much though (except redemption values.

The airlines seem to be targeting loyalty at the front of the plane and trying to loosen the strings to allow price to be the target for the back end.

With regards to the loosening of the alliance ties, the alliances generally (not just OW but *A and the others) are getting stronger and stronger behind the scenes in areas of ground handling, purchasing, marketing etc so I think they have a long way to run yet. They will have further to run as the trade barriers surrounding air travel are removed ever so slowly by governments around the world.