Comment by Aurornis

3 months ago

You’re still proving the point above, which is ignoring the fact that the restriction is specifically targeted at a small number of countries. Google is also rolling out processes for advanced users to install apps. It’s all in the linked post (which apparently isn’t being read by the people injecting their own assumptions)

Google is not rolling this out to protect against YouTube ReVanced but only in a small number of countries. That’s an illogical conclusion to draw from the facts.

26 comments

Aurornis

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unsungNovelty  3 months ago

Its my device. Not google's. Imagine telling you which NPM/PIP packages you can install from your terminal.

Also, its not SIDE loading. Its installing an app.

  • freefaler  3 months ago

    Well... it would be good if this was true, but read the ToS and it looks more like a licence to use than "ownership" sadly :(

    • AnthonyMouse  3 months ago

      "Android" is really a lot of different code but most of it is the Apache license or the GPL. Google Play has its own ToS, but why should that have to do with anything when you're not using it?

  • xnx  3 months ago

    I agree, but I don't see why Google gets more critical attention than the iPhone or Xbox.

    • _blk  3 months ago

      iPhone has always been that way (try installing an .ipa file that's not signed with a valid apple developer certificate). For Google forced app verification is a major change. Xbox I don't know..

  • da_chicken  3 months ago

    Yeah, let's ask the Debian team about installing packages from third party repos.

    I'm not on the side of locking people out, but this is a poor argument.

    • cookiengineer  3 months ago

      > Yeah, let's ask the Debian team about installing packages from third party repos.

      Debian already is sideloaded on the graciousness of Microsoft's UEFI bootloader keys. Without that key, you could not install anything else than MS Windows.

      Hence you don't realize how good of an argument it is, because you even bamboozled yourself without realizing it.

      It gets a worse argument if we want to discuss Qubes and other distributions that are actually focused on security, e.g. via firejail, hardened kernels or user namespaces to sandbox apps.

      14 replies →

jeroenhd  3 months ago

The countries that go after Google are the first wave, they're applying these restrictions globally not much later.

The linked post is full of fluff and low on detail. Google doesn't seem to have the details themselves; they're continuing with the rollout while still designing the flow that will let experienced users install apps like normal.