Comment by glenstein

"That’s why they used sideload" is exactly the point being contested. Historically, install was the unmarked, neutral verb for adding software, regardless of source. The distinction, when needed, lived in qualifiers about provenance. Introducing a new verb for non-store installs does more than merely describe a difference, it reassigns conceptual ownership of "install" to the store path.

And neutrality here isn't about mirroring current usage frequency (which is unique to Android and recent relative to the history of computing), it's about continuity with prior computing norms. Even when one distribution path dominated in practice, it didn't get to redefine the base verb.