It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation.
To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe.
But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 17 betas. Google is quietly proceeding with the original lockdown.
The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible.
If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community.
Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years.)
It won't though, because there's a ecosystem of banking/insurance/whatever apps that have bought into the android/iphone lockdown mindsete that people will simply be locked out of. Open alternatives can grow when there is a viable means of slow growth, and cutting off the oxygen to such things is the implicit intent.
There's no point. Remote attestation means your device needs to be corporate owned to be trusted. Even if you had your own linux phone, it wouldn't be able to interface with institutions such as banks and governments. They trust Google's keys, not yours. This doesn't quite end free computing, it just kills it for normal people and ostracizes us hackers who insist on owning our systems.
For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.
Expecting Google to give up control of one of the only alternative operating systems is right up there with believing in the tooth fairy.
What you're saying should happen, but it will only happen when the government legislates it happens; which frankly they should be doing (along with nationalizing a few other software projects to be fair).
A trillion dollar transnational corporation with massive monopolistic tendencies will never ever do the right thing. Expect to force feed it down their throats.
Even if you have linux, there are still third parties that have control over your hardware. Even if you're using graphenos, you can't block the sim or the cellular radio stack, and likely other modules on the SoC, from at-will access to every sensor on the device. You can at least protect your files, unless there's a mitm or other vector that graphenos can't cope with. And at worst, they can simply clone all your encrypted bits and wait on Moore's law or sufficient cubits to go back and crack the copy, on the off chance there's anything they want with your data in the first place.
Why does there seem to be a growing push to tie real-world identity to nearly everything we do online? The justification is almost always "safety". I know this trend has been developing for years, but over the past couple of years it feels like it's accelerated globally.
The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using).
I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team:
The enforcement mechanism is in Google Play Services, not AOSP. To laypeople the difference doesn't matter but to folks looking for alternatives it does, so the discussion is often muddied and imprecise. This is like when YouTube removed public dislike counts and it turned into "they're removing the dislike button!"
You can’t really do that long-term as Google will change code that will not match however you are not enforcing this policy
So at the very least you’d have to keep patches up to date.
Long term divergence could be enough that’s it’s just a hard fork and/or Google changes so much that the maintainer can’t keep the patches working at the same pace
I couldn’t read your link as it asks to join mastodon.social
The only reason I was sticking to Android for years is this. And I think there is no moat for Android. I would rather switch to iOS if both platforms are same restrictive.
I did this last year. Reluctantly. And using iOS still hurts. But it’s better than that Google crap.
I developed my own Android ROMs from 2009-2011, complete with my own tuned kernel. I ran the local Android developers MeetUp group and evangelised Android development. When Honeycomb launched I helped OEMs test their beta firmware. For free.
But as Google has become certified Evil, the direction of Android has been very clear. In practice I honestly can’t say it’s now any more open than iOS. Except it has a lot more avenues for Google to mine your data to sell ads. And the quality of third party apps on it is decidedly worse.
I thought long and hard about getting a Linux phone. But I need a good camera on my phone to take random snaps of kids/pets/etc. And the Linux phones just aren’t there.
I hate the shitty duopoly we have ended up with. But I now realise that the openness of x86 and pc as platform really was an accident of history.
There is an implicit shame in disgrace but faceless entities have no shame. They'll just put out another press release written in corporate newspeak by an LLM and move on withe the plans anyway. This is standard Google behaviour. They do it with Chrome, they do it with Android, they'll keep doing it with all their captive markets. I fear that in practice even having an "advanced flow" will make little difference as some applications will refuse to work if you have it enabled anyway (in the same vein if debugging is enabled, for example).
Nothing about Android is open except the absolutely minimum amount of linux kernel that's required to boot the thing. Then it's blobs and restrictions all the way to the screen.
Good news: You (as a community) can now finally wake up from your dreams and get some things right!
It's really a shame that you always wait until you really get forced. Particularly in situations when every individual's inability has consequences for the others as well. I really gave up all ideas of a better world. With this community, the best you can hope is that the decay will be slow.
So everyone who would describe himself/herself as a FOSS enthusiast, or at least a friend of a somewhat open system where the user has some actual rights beyond sole consumption, put some pressure towards having actually de-Googled systems. A system that mostly comes from Google, would not fit my definition of that term at all! Even if they removed some parts of it. It's an euphemism. And it's dangerous because you constantly get trapped by these euphemisms. Ever. Single. F'ing. Time.
Good thing restricting side-loading isn't legal in the European Union! Not a problem here. Apple had to enable side-loading on their EU-based phones and so will Google if they restrict it.
Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.
The kind of "side-loading" of notarized apps outside the manufacturer's app store that Apple allows in the EU is exactly what Google proposed to do for all its Android builds. We don't want that.
If a lawsuit tackles this problem in the EU, will we finally also see somebody go after MS for their obnoxious code signing certificates?
While MS code signing certs are more circumventable for power-users than Android's new approved developer program, their pricing is far more prohibitive for independent OSS developers and hobbyists, costing hundreds of USD per year.
Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.
I understand why mobile/tablet OSs are so crappy compared to desktop; in the past these devices had no resources cpu and ram wise and had to heavily watch battery consumption (the latter is still true mostly, but that should be up to the user), but my phone is more powerful than my laptop and yet runs crap with no real usable filesystem and all kinds of other weirdness that's no longer needed.
However, I have 2 Linux phones and Linux on phones is just not there. Massive vendors (Samsung, Huawei, etc) would need to get behind it to make it go anywhere. Also so banking etc apps remain available also on those phones. We can already run android apps on Linux, Windows apps, so it would be a bright future but really it needs injections and support for large phone makers.
I hope the EU/US mess will give it somewhat of a push but I doubt it.
I.. don't think it will happen. For several reasons too. It is not that I don't think Android will change substantially, but the following constraints suggest a different trajectory:
- AI boom or bust will affect hardware availability
- there is a push on its way to revamp phones into 'what comes next' -- see various versions of the same product that listens to you ( earing, ring, necklace )
- small LLMs allow for minimal hardware requirements for some tasks
- anti-institutional sentiment seems to be driving some of the adoption
This is one of the most naive things I see people repeat.
The reality is that we're lucky to have mostly-good things at all that align with most of our interests.
Yet people get so comfortable that they start to think mostly-good things are some sort of guarantee or natural order of the world.
Such that if only they could just kill off the thing that's mostly-good, they'll finally get something that's even better (or rather, more aligned with their interests rather than anyone else's).
In reality, mostly-good things that align with most of our interests is mostly a fluke of history, not something that was guaranteed to unfold.
Other common examples: capitalism, the internet, html/css, their favorite part of society (but they have ideas of how it could be a little better), some open-source project they actually use daily, etc.
If only there weren't Android, surely your set of ideals would win and nobody else's.
>The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible.
I have trouble understanding why this is a threat to AOSP distribution. I would have said quite the opposite actually, I don't see why they would not remove the verification and that's an incentive for people to use their project instead of Google Android.
I like it, because more and more people see Google as what it is: a ruthless, selfish and extremely greedy mega-mega-corporation. The less we depend on it the better.
Who could Android be possibly recommended to at this point?
I know iPhones aren't affordable for the layman in many countries. But for anyone with an option, why would you buy an Android? All the "customization" things I cared about when I was on Android are either doable on an iPhone now with better implementation, or something I don't care about.
I was a die-hard until I went through enough cycles of Google deprecating and reinventing their apps and services every year, breaking my workflow/habits, that I got sick of them and moved to Apple everything. And all the changes I've seen since then are only making me happier I got out of the ecosystem when I did. Unlimited Google Photos backups with Pixels are gone, Google Play Music is gone, the free development/distribution environment is gone, etc.
If people can't even develop for the thing without going through the Google process, they're really just a shitty iOS knockoff.
But this thread is about the option to install apps on your device regardless of OS vendor approval, and that's not possible either with iOS nor is iOS open source. And that's what this is all about. If you don't care about open-source and user freedom, then this change wouldn't matter to you anyway.
I switched back to Android in large part for KDE Connect. You can get continuity esque features that work with any desktop operating system. I also get to use real Firefox instead of a Safari wrapper. I still use as few Google services as possible, pretty much just Maps.
As someone who hates both android and iOS but currently has to use iOS, I definitely hate it more. It lacks so many things one can take for granted on android. Even a usable keyboard is missing from iOS.
I love the Java/Kotlin userspace, even if it is Android Java flavour, and the our way or the highway attitude to C and C++ code, instead of yet another UNIX clone with some kind of X Windows into the phone.
In the past I was also on Windows Phone, again great .NET based userspace, with some limited C++, moving into the future, not legacy OS design.
I can afford iPhones, but won't buy them for private use, as I am not sponsoring Apple tax when I think about how many people on this world hardly can afford a feature phone in first place.
However I also support their Swift/Objective-C userspace, without being yet another UNIX clone.
If the Linux phones are to be yet another OpenMoko with Gtk+, or Qt, I don't see it moving the needle in mainstream adoption.
At this point, I wouldn't recommend Android other than enjoying the much steeper discount with the headset. For me, the only thing that is keeping me on Android is easier access to commas on the keyboard.
The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us.
I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to develop their version and go the Apple way (which, funny enough, no one has a problem with). Development of AOSP can be controlled by a software foundation, like tons of other successful projects.
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. And it all originally stemed from phone carriers wanting to lock customers into their services.
We need some pro-consumer regulations on hardware which mandate open platforms. Fat chance of that happening, though, as the likes of both the EU and US want these locked down systems so they put in mandatory backdoors.
Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom.
Even if locked bootloaders weren't a thing, not being able to just buy a phone with an open Android pre-installed means it would get relegated to the Linux Zone, with a whole lot of "security alert" and "device not supported". Also, low popularity leads to fewer development resources, so it would probably suffer from lack of polish.
People will keep using the OS their phone comes with and that would be Google's Android. It's worse than with Windows PCs and Windows to be honest because phones have a locked bootloader.
A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.
There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that.
It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected.
Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho.
What about the Android SDK? I don't think that this is open source, is it? As a developer, when you download an Android SDK you have accept a licence that is not open source, right?
Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants.
The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.
The gigantic task of maintaining and developing a mobile OS that needs to retain compatibility with AOSP/GPS anyway to tap into the huge amount of applications that are available?
It will cost a lot of money and as long as Google is still doing regular AOSP code drops, what's the point?
I contacted the EU DMA team about my concerns and got a real reply within 24 hours. Not just an automated message, it looked like a real human read my message and wrote a reply. I'd urge other EU citizens to do the same.
Great idea, I just did the same. I encourage other EU citizens to do the same. Keeping at least one of the two major mobile ecosystems open is important.
(And install GrapheneOS, the more successful open Android becomes, the better.)
Wow, someone replied to an email. From the same organization that is pushing for chat control. That would give you hope... European tax payers have this funny belief that their bureaucratic overlords are all there in Brussels acting with the taxpayer's interest and privacy in mind. One can dream, I suppose...
I am genuinely curious, what is your moral justification to attempt to use party A to forcefully influence how party B develops/sells *their* intellectual property? Party B owes you nothing. You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete. How do you justify it, and how would you feel if you were on the receiving end of such a dictum?
Well, Google has marketed Android as an open source operating system (AOSP) and openness about the system [1] and encouraged manufacturers and developers to build on it based on the premise of openness and of course being "free". People advocated for Android because it was open source compared to other alternatives. But with this change they are simply ending that openness. People that have developed F-Droid and other alternative stores have contributed to the platform value (such as not being able to de-google their phone), the same goes for many other developers who have spent countless of hours developing for Android.
To say they don't owe you nothing seems like a betrayal on the promise that Android was an open platform (and open source).
> You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete
That's not an option as you are making it out to be. For a user switching means buying a new phone, repurchasing apps (if you bought) and maybe apps won't be even available to the new system, for developers that means all their knowledge about the system gone. Building a mobile operating system requires millions if not billions of dollars, years of work and convincing developers and businesses (hardware makers) to use your operating system. The barrier to enter is so high that telling people to just compete with Google is not a realistic solution.
Party A does not owe Party B the right to sell in Party A:s legal area.
Party B is allowed to choose not to sell in EU. If you wanna sell in EU you have to comply with EU rules. If you wanna sell in US you have to comply with US laws. That simple.
Maybe "intelectual property" is really imaginary property given how the same big companies just gobble data from other people and companies wothout permission to feed their AI models (Facebook with books, recently NVIDIA with milions of videos from Youtube).
I guess they would not due that if they really believed some questionable synthetic construct like "intelectual property" really existed ?
That is not how the European Union works. One of the core goals of the EU is to guarantee the European single market. One of the core principles of the single market is the Freedom to establish and provide services [1]. The Apple/Google duopoly have effectively created a market within the single market where the core principles of the single market do not apply anymore.
Tech has a strong tendency to favor outcomes with only a handful large players that make competition impossible due to network effects, etc., distorting the market. The Digital Markets Act was made to address this problem.
IANAL, but Google's Android changes seem like a fairly clear violation of the DMA.
This is typically hard for people from the US to grasp (I saw that you are not originally from the US though). In Europe, capitalism is not the end goal, the goal of capitalism is to serve the people and if that fails, it needs to be regulated.
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As an aside, the lengths people go to defend a company with $402.836B yearly revenue :).
Are we still talking about massive companies with power to arbitrarily decide how billions of people use the personal computers they bought? Who's doing the feeling? Why would we presume all of their conduct to be moral?
> Party B owes you nothing. You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete.
When 99% of government/banks/etc require you to use a certain service to access basic services, you need some way of ensuring you don't have to sell your soul to use it. Alternatives would be really great, but Google is part of a duopoly.
Just because you build the rails doesn't mean you get to decide who gets to use the trains.
My moral justification is that my right to do with the physical property I have in my physical hand is more important than any noncorporeal corporation's right to do anything with their noncorporeal intellectual property.
The truth is, I gave party C money for a product. Party B does not get to say anything about what party C gave me. And they absolutely do owe me something, and that is the use of the product they gave me for my money. Whatever their terms of service say about licensing versus owning should not trump the fact that I made a one-time purchase and I have physical ownership that they cannot revoke. This is not a car lease where I have a contract with the dealership and they can reposses the car if I don't make the payments.
Google is engaging in immoral business practices. Since they are immoral, it is morally justified to say they must be stopped.
> how would you feel if you were on the receiving end of such a dictum?
I continue to be astounded how people still just flat out assume that everyone must be a capitalist.
If I were on the receiving end of a dictum aimed at stopping immoral behavior, I would cease my immoral behavior. But I'm not going to be on the receiving end in the first place because I don't aim to do immoral things in the first place.
So you're saying that if I open a restaurant I'm free to poison the food and you can just decide whether to eat there or not and no government should be able to forbid me to do this?
The moral justification is the same anyone else employs. I have a tool to create an outcome and I'm going to use that tool to produce that outcome. It's that simple.
I want Google to lock down their platform. Hardcore locked down. So locked down you can't do anything with it at all. Because people need motivation to do something hard.
Android has been a bloated walled garden for years. It should have been like a PC w/Windows or Linux: anyone should be able to make an app (any way they want), publish it, let anyone who wants to download it & run it. But that was never the plan. The plan was to provide a moat to allow mobile telephone operators (& Google) to dictate what users were allowed to do with their phones. Imagine your ISP having total control over your desktop computer. Or killing a website, or program, because the ISP doesn't like it.
It is insane that we, the people giving them the money and agency to do this, that we've allowed this to be the status quo. We need to do something about it. We need to kill Android. And from the ashes, make a new platform that works for us, and not for a corporation's profits and anti-competition.
Just to put out what Google actually said in their blog post [0]:
> We appreciate the community's engagement and have heard the early feedback – specifically from students and hobbyists who need an accessible path to learn, and from power users who are more comfortable with security risks. We are making changes to address the needs of both groups.
> We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to entry when building apps intended only for a small group, like family or friends. We are using your input to shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists. This will allow you to distribute your creations to a limited number of devices without going through the full verification requirements.
> Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren't tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. We are gathering early feedback on the design of this feature now and will share more details in the coming months.
It is also true that they have not updated their developer documentation site and still assert that developer verification will be "required" in September 2026 [1]. Which might be true by some nonsensical definition of "required" if installing unverified apps requires an "advanced flow", but let's not give too much benefit of the doubt here.
> We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to entry when building apps intended only for a small group, like family or friends. We are using your input to shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists. This will allow you to distribute your creations to a limited number of devices without going through the full verification requirements.
In classic Google fashion, they hear the complaint, pretend that it's about something else, and give a half baked solution to that different problem that was not the actual issue. Any solution that disadvantages F-Droid compared to the less trustworthy Google Play is a problem.
Even restricting the mitigation to "students and hobbyists" is bad.
I should have the right to have parents, friends or anyone use a "free" store that is not under control of Google if the user and app developer wish so. But also, somehow there should be something done to avoid the monopoly forcing to use the Google services. Like major institutions like bank, gov and co being forced to provide alternatives like a webapp when they provide app tied to the Google play store.
I think you've omitted the next section, which seems more relevant. It seems like they will still allow installs, just hide it behind some scare text. Seems reasonable?
> shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists.
Even that is a step too far in the wrong direction. Doesn't matter if it's free, or whatever, simply requiring an account at all to create and run software on your own device (or make it available to others) is wrong.
There exists no freedom when you are required to verify your identity, or even just provide any personal information whatsoever, to a company to run software on your device that you own.
This isnt going to be a popular post because the HN crowd is very much a "China bad" crowd but I hypothesize China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department. This might be in the form of commits and investment in fdroid and pinephone, or a tiktok like alternative to the wests walled garden.
Edit: this will likely exist "uncensored" in other markets but conform to the PRCs standards and practices domestically, similarly to how tiktok operated prior to selling a version specifically taylored to US censorship and propaganda.
Not a chance. A fork that is under China's control, maybe, but not an "open" fork. They don't even pretend to have that as a value.
You may theoretically find it advantageous to use such a system anyhow. To a first-order approximation, the danger a government poses to you is proportional to its proximity to you. (In the interests of fairness, I will point out, so are the benefits a government may offer to you. In this case it just happens to be the dangers we are discussing.) Using the stack of a government based many thousands of miles/kilometers away from you may solve a problem for you, if you judge they are much less likely to use it against you than your local government.
But China certainly won't put out an "open" anything.
Not sure if you have been following the LLM space or even the emulator handhelds space, but Chinese companies have been doing great with putting out open source software lately.
The irony is that software coming from China is a lot more open than western software. Biggest examples are huggingface models mostly coming from Chinese institutions. Its also strategicaly wise for China to go this path.
Maybe a shift to Huaweis HarmonyOS with its android compatibility layer or SailfishOS if they play their cards right.
As far as HarmonyOS i dont see many uptakes outside strict US free requirements as the other OEMs are lazy and also dont want to be locked into a competitor.
SailfishOS looks like its your time to faceplant once more , by not having a proper stratergy on monetizing on the many missteps from the current monopoly.I thonk at this point they need a leadership/biz stratergy overhaul - the tech is nice and polished, user demand is off the charts for an alternative . And they are just .. missing. Not even in th e conversation.
Pinephone is tragic, bought a bunch of Pine64's devices (PP, PPP, PB, PBuds, arm tablet, eInk tablet) but old tech, missing drivers, can't blame em no money no drivers... Still the community on Discord is great/helpful people.
That'd be great but I'm not feeling like the Chinese market is too worried about open development. I got a Huawei Watch 5 as a gift and I liked it enough to try to develop my own apps (their app store is a wasteland) but to my surprise Harmony OS is not Android compatible (just Android based somehow). The watch's developer mode is useless. Trying to register a developer account is almost impossible and it seems they only allow chinese nationals and there's no plan to open registration. I couldn't even download their custom IDE (something like Android Studio) without an account.
The link is to the f-droid blog. The official "Keep Android Open" site is at https://keepandroidopen.org/, and contains good information on how you can contribute by contacting regulators.
It's also heavily influenced by businesses. Most employers will happily hand you an Apple or Android phone for work, but I don't think there is a single company out there that would dare to hand normal people an Ubuntu Touch based phone.
We (people who live in a country/confederacy with working antitrust laws) have power to keep large companies from anticompetitive practices such as this one.
If they close things up with no alternative, the free open source software will likely start to catch up. it will take a few years though. This could be a blessing in disguise.
There is just no reasonable way that the open source community can compete with a $3.8T company. And before you say something along the lines of, "But they don't need to compete, they just need to be good enough", that still requires business to put their apps on some open source app store and make them compatible with the open source OS, and there is close to zero incentive for them to do so.
This is sad as there’s been a real resurgence of gaming devices (Ayn Thor/Odin, Retroid pocket devices, Ayaneo, etc) moving to Android from Linux variants (Batocera, Arc, Garlic/OnionOS).
It’s sad but more of an incentive for folks to finally take Linux as a viable alternative, and build on efforts made by Valve with SteamOS.
If I understood correctly, to "protect" users, Google wants to control what is installed on Android phones. I guess it means the Play store will be the only way to install an app, which in turn means:
- That users won't be able to install what they want and that they would need a google account to install apps
- That app developers have to go through google to distribute their apps, with identity verification etc.
Obviously this is awful and would mean the end of F-droid and Aurora store etc.
However, I'm also reading here and there that it is a threat to alternative ROMs. To me it sounds at the contrary as an amazing opportunity, as they can strip this verification and be the only truly open Android, or am I missing something? Why do people link this app verification thing with a possible closing of AOSP?
Also, Mozilla was already saying it 10years ago with Firefox OS but... The web is the platform. 90% of the apps out there could be websites. We have all technologies needed for this including offline with service workers. And it works on every damn platform, even the most obscure OS has a web browser. Don't want to be locked to an ecosystem? Just target the web!
> I guess it means the Play store will be the only way to install an app
No, non-Play stores will still work, but developers will need to register a developer account with Google that is tied to some real identity. They already need to do this to distribute through the Play store, but now it'll apply regardless.
This is to make it harder for scam apps to churn app signatures. Kind of like requiring code-signing, but with only one CA.
> That users won't be able to install what they want
No, sideloading will still work, but it won't work if the APK isn't signed by someone in the Google developer registry.
> and that they would need a google account to install apps
Nope.
> That app developers have to go through google to distribute their apps, with identity verification etc.
They don't need to distribute through Google, but they will need to be involved with Google and do identity verification.
> However, I'm also reading here and there that it is a threat to alternative ROMs. To me it sounds at the contrary as an amazing opportunity, as they can strip this verification and be the only truly open Android, or am I missing something?
You're being misinformed. They won't even need to strip the verification. The verification is only for certified Android -- OEMs that partner with Google. Custom ROMs and the OEMs that aren't certified (Amazon, some Chinese manufacturers) won't have verification.
The target audience for verification and who would ever use a custom ROM has basically zero overlap.
If I can't use banking or my NFC wallets on my phone, it has become 90% useless. The other 10% of usefulness is texting and calls, which every other phone can do.
Unfortunately, this mostly means using the closed android ecosystem.
I run Graphene on my Pixel and banking apps just work. There is no Google Pay, obviously, since Google dependencies have been stripped out from the system. I just carry a credit card.
>this mostly means using the closed android ecosystem
Maybe, but there's no technical reason for this. As I've mentioned before, I can do banking just fine on my Gentoo machine where the entire corpus of software on it, is FOSS and compiled by myself.
The line between a phone and a computer is what has been perforated. What I need is a modem. I don't need the modem baked into a computer that has a permanently affixed screen and battery. That then pretends to be some kind of secure enclave for my deepest secrets.
"Security."
As if I'm in the government or something. Why can't the people who need military level security get their own platform? Shouldn't they just have that already?
The shift towards locked-down ecosystems is concerning for developers. Openness isn't just about freedom; it's about the longevity of the hardware we own. If we can't side-load or audit, we're just renting the device
If they go through with this I am switching to iPhone because there at least I am told up front and am tried less like the a product to be sold to advertisers.
I've finally started de-googling and removing google from my life as much as I can. It's difficult with how much of everything is soaked in Google. I'm sure other's here have gotten much further, but everything you do to reduce their monopoly control helps.
it's becoming ever more clear to me that i'll have at least two devices: one running software i trust, one running software corporates trust, with a very narrow pipeline connecting the two, if it all. my demon-haunted device can stay offline in my bag and get hotspot'd in to my trustworthy device as necessary.
not happy about it, but i don't see a path forward that lets one participate in the wider ecosystem and maintain their own sovereignty and sanity.
I remember not long ago arguing that having Chromium become a monopoly was a bad thing, as it would mean Google could totally twist the web standard in something much more closed. I think this is a prime example.
The biggest surprise I had in attempting to distribute my first Android app is how difficult it is to get beta-testers through the "standard" channels. It requires a 1 week review and 25 beta-users invited by email addresses
In contrast, Apple has a ~48 hour turnaround for reviews before you can upload to TestFlight and distribute a beta with a link
Not sure if I am in some "trusted developer" cohort on iOS but not Android - but the difference was enough for me to stop trying on Android
Amusingly, if Microsfot didn't have a such an awful reputation ( both recent and old ), their newly announced phones could have actually been a viable competitor.
I question whether an OS that has always been controlled by Google has ever been open.
Sure parts of it were, but Google has always remained in control of Android. Anyone who expected that to change (in favor of more openness) hasn't been paying attention to the actions of tech companies for the past several decades.
The relative openness is the reason I gravitated towards Android and Google. I've never really taken advantage of it, but it's nice knowing it's there and that my phone (a Google Pixel) is something I have more control over than with other vendors.
This is where I wish someone like MKBHD and others with big Android followings would speak up and say they will both blast this practice and not review any new Android phones/(Google) apps unless there's a full walk-back of this position.
Since smartphone apps are often times required to do banking or identifying yourself now and there's tons of special apps in order to use appliances, and by that I mean really the only way to use modern appliances is by a smartphone app, emulating an Android environment on a laptop or PC with a bluetooth dongle is essential if you want to leave that smartphone era behind you for good, but still be able to function in this society.
the frustrating part is that the "advanced flow" alternative Google mentioned still doesn't exist in practice. the media ran with the reassurance headline and most people think the issue was resolved.
What people forget is that the real monopoly is in how the AOSP hardware OEM contract is written....
Remember how hard Amazon had it to attempt an Android fork?
I was due to OEM SOC access being locked out due to those contracts....
Any open source mobile OS attempting to complete with AOSP needs access to mobile OEM soc providers not touched by AOSP contracts and currently that is somewhat hard.
Android was never open. User apps are limited, only system apps can do X which means third party apps can't compete with Google and this is not a coincidence.
Let's focus on making it possible to use really open Linux systems on smartphones.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I was talking about the whole permissions system where the user is a third class citizen. Device manufacturers are second class citizens (restricted by Google via CDD/CTS) and the only true winner on that system is Google.
Regarding some concrete examples - Google can deeply integrate Gemini, but a competitor can't do this and users get no final say here either. Competitors are restricted by the permission system, Google is not restricted at all.
While rooting can alleviate this to some extent, Play Integrity is there to make sure the user regrets that decision to break free..
Crazy idea: when companies change their product, they have to change the name.
Do you ever feel like the same food item doesn't taste the same it did 10 years ago? Maybe it's your memory being faulty or maybe the company got new management which decided to cut costs while keeping prices, extract the differential value from customer inertia and move on when the product stops being profitable.
Android is the same. Certain freedoms were a part of the offering - a part of the brand name. They no longer are. Not only should lose their trademark[0], they should be legally forced to change the name.
[0]: The purpose of which is to identify genuine product from counterfeits - in this case, the counterfeit just happens to be by the same company which released the original product.
>But Google said… Said what? That there’s a magical “advanced flow”? Did you see it? Did anyone experience it? When is it scheduled to be released? Was it part of Android 16 QPR2 in December? Of 16 QPR3 Beta 2.1 last week? Of Android 17 Beta 1? No? That’s the issue
A bit ironic to not believe Google is doing this. The same questions have same answers when asked about when Google is locking down side loading. A bit self-serving to pick and choose which things you want to believe are happening.
Google made the first move with their initial plan to lock it down, so the onus is on Google to calm the fears they caused if they don't want people to distrust them.
Just like Microsoft screwed up Windows, Google will screw up Android and people will move to Linux on PCs and some open version of Android, or Harmony, or whatever new mobile system comes up, on their phones.
Nothing lasts for ever. The sooner you make the switch, the better off you will be.
Capitalism is the privatization of human needs. As long as these tech platforms are owned privately they will be used to police and make money.
This view NEEDS to be central to the tech freedom rhetoric, else the whole movement is literally just begging politicians and hoping corporations do the right thing... useless.
Aren't the politicians or their appointed bureaucrats who'd be making all the decisions if these needs were government owned? Why would state control lead to less policing? What incentive structure would lead to innovation without a profit motive, when even the modern communist world relies on capital markets?
> Aren't the politicians or their appointed bureaucrats who'd be making all the decisions if these needs were government owned?
Well that would be true under a capitalist government.
> Why would state control lead to less policing?
Its not just "the state runs it", its "we actively become the state".
Collective ownership through peoples councils, peoples courts with a world view that keeps it all open: socialism.
The world view of not allowing individual ownership over collective goods, the world view of socialism, is the life line of the movement. The actual practice of daily democracy, of running production and of deciding social functions is everyones responsibility and it should not be left to what has become a professional class of liars.
Public office members, which should only exist where absolutely necessary, should be locals and serve as messengers with 0 decision making power. All power should be in the local councils. We can mathematically implement this today (0 knowledge proofs).
Every single book on socialism is on theory and practices of acheiving this. Thats what the "dictatorship of the proletariat is", the dictatorship of working people, collectively.
> What incentive structure would lead to innovation without a profit motive, when even the modern communist world relies on capital markets?
We've been innovating for hundreds of thousands of years before capitalism. You dont need to generate money to innovate, the innovation itself is the driver, AKA a better life. No need to lock and limit production behind the attaining of profits of those who lead it.
If we force it upon them by begging politicians, corporations still have the incentive to find a way to remove it or circumvent it.
Youre playing the cat and mouse game because you've been taught that solving it is too extreme (thats not a coincidence).
We dont need to endlessly fight a whole class of people, capitalists, for them not to use the things we require against us. Only socialism can solve that.
From a marketing standpoint it seems like a baffling decision on Google's part.
I own a Pixel and while the hardware seems decent, I've had a buggy and annoying experience with Android, and it's been getting worse lately.
Are Google so high on their own supply that they think people use their phones out of preference for the OS? Because frankly it's not very good. That's like Microsoft thinking people use Teams because of its merits.
People buy Android phones because they can be had cheaper than an equivalent iPhone and because in spite of the buggy and inconsistent mess of an OS, you aren't beholden to Apple's regimented UX. Locking down Android will not give it a "premium experience"... It'll always just be "Temu iOS" at best.
Have you considered Graphene since you own a Pixel? It's a huge upgrade over the stock OS in terms of security, privacy and general reduction of bloat.
There are several topics where Android is significantly ahead to the point that iOS is just a toy, and there are areas where the reverse is true.
And I say that as a recent convert, so it's not like I have a decade out of date view of any of the OSs. In my experience I had more visual bugs in case of iOS than android (volume slider not displaying correctly in certain cases when the content was rotated as a very annoying example).
It's not, though. Google phones are not going to suddenly become luxury devices.
It's going to remain at the same level of polish (i.e. mediocre), except now without the major selling point of being able to run your own apps and have alternative app stores, etc. Back around Ice Cream Sandwich or thereabouts they got rid of "phone calls only mode" and forced us to rely on their half-baked "priority mode" that's an opaque shitshow.
When my wife is on call she gets random whatsapp notifications dinging all night, whereas when I had an iphone I could set Focus mode and achieve proper "phone calls only".
Android is not good. I use it despite its flaws, because of the trade-offs, not because it's better.
> Are Google so high on their own supply that they think people use their phones out of preference for the OS? Because frankly it's not very good
Honestly having gone back and forth between iOS and Android every three years or so, both OS are the same. It's not like the grass is really greener on the Apple side. The UX is virtually identical for anything that matters. Personally I put material Android above liquid glass iOS. The alleged polish of the Apple UX was lost on me when I had my last iphone.
The reason Google's moves are surprising has more to do with them embracing being a service player more and more with the arrival of Gemini and them having regulators breathing down their necks everywhere.
I guess they did it after the truly baffling US decision in the Epic trial but it's very likely to go against them in the EU.
The rumors that I have heard (and one government document I read that was poorly translated from Thai) is that there are some countries who are pressuring Google on this to combat info-stealing malware. Apparently, account-takeover/theft is very prevalent in SE Asia where most banking is done via Android phones.
Fairphone 4 looks close, hopefully fairphone 4 support will continue to improve at this rate. Pinephone is another close one, but underpowered hardware and camera support kills it.
I am not even that intensive of a phone user. but there is no way I could daily drive pmOS.
It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation.
To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe.
But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 17 betas. Google is quietly proceeding with the original lockdown.
The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible.
If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community.
Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years.)
It won't though, because there's a ecosystem of banking/insurance/whatever apps that have bought into the android/iphone lockdown mindsete that people will simply be locked out of. Open alternatives can grow when there is a viable means of slow growth, and cutting off the oxygen to such things is the implicit intent.
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There's no point. Remote attestation means your device needs to be corporate owned to be trusted. Even if you had your own linux phone, it wouldn't be able to interface with institutions such as banks and governments. They trust Google's keys, not yours. This doesn't quite end free computing, it just kills it for normal people and ostracizes us hackers who insist on owning our systems.
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Until Android is crippled it will continue to take resources away from Linux Phone development and companies that will launch phones for it
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For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.
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Have a look at this post
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723594 from Emre @emrekosmaz
It is a smartphone that runs Android, launches Debian, and dual-boots Windows 11
Actual link https://nexphone.com/blog/the-tale-of-nexphone-one-phone-eve...
But there is a lot of resources put into the android ecosystem already. Even open source apps like anki, syncthing etc
Expecting Google to give up control of one of the only alternative operating systems is right up there with believing in the tooth fairy.
What you're saying should happen, but it will only happen when the government legislates it happens; which frankly they should be doing (along with nationalizing a few other software projects to be fair).
A trillion dollar transnational corporation with massive monopolistic tendencies will never ever do the right thing. Expect to force feed it down their throats.
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Even if you have linux, there are still third parties that have control over your hardware. Even if you're using graphenos, you can't block the sim or the cellular radio stack, and likely other modules on the SoC, from at-will access to every sensor on the device. You can at least protect your files, unless there's a mitm or other vector that graphenos can't cope with. And at worst, they can simply clone all your encrypted bits and wait on Moore's law or sufficient cubits to go back and crack the copy, on the off chance there's anything they want with your data in the first place.
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The limitation of linux phones is hardware. I have been watching the progress of postmarketOS on the fairphone 4, and looks promising.
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> If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones...
It won't.
Why does there seem to be a growing push to tie real-world identity to nearly everything we do online? The justification is almost always "safety". I know this trend has been developing for years, but over the past couple of years it feels like it's accelerated globally.
Online anonymity makes it harder for TPTB to punish dissidents.
There's strong political backing for it now.
The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using).
I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team:
https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103...
The enforcement mechanism is in Google Play Services, not AOSP. To laypeople the difference doesn't matter but to folks looking for alternatives it does, so the discussion is often muddied and imprecise. This is like when YouTube removed public dislike counts and it turned into "they're removing the dislike button!"
You can’t really do that long-term as Google will change code that will not match however you are not enforcing this policy
So at the very least you’d have to keep patches up to date.
Long term divergence could be enough that’s it’s just a hard fork and/or Google changes so much that the maintainer can’t keep the patches working at the same pace
I couldn’t read your link as it asks to join mastodon.social
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The only reason I was sticking to Android for years is this. And I think there is no moat for Android. I would rather switch to iOS if both platforms are same restrictive.
You'll miss having a keyboard that works
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I did this last year. Reluctantly. And using iOS still hurts. But it’s better than that Google crap.
I developed my own Android ROMs from 2009-2011, complete with my own tuned kernel. I ran the local Android developers MeetUp group and evangelised Android development. When Honeycomb launched I helped OEMs test their beta firmware. For free.
But as Google has become certified Evil, the direction of Android has been very clear. In practice I honestly can’t say it’s now any more open than iOS. Except it has a lot more avenues for Google to mine your data to sell ads. And the quality of third party apps on it is decidedly worse.
I thought long and hard about getting a Linux phone. But I need a good camera on my phone to take random snaps of kids/pets/etc. And the Linux phones just aren’t there.
I hate the shitty duopoly we have ended up with. But I now realise that the openness of x86 and pc as platform really was an accident of history.
There is an implicit shame in disgrace but faceless entities have no shame. They'll just put out another press release written in corporate newspeak by an LLM and move on withe the plans anyway. This is standard Google behaviour. They do it with Chrome, they do it with Android, they'll keep doing it with all their captive markets. I fear that in practice even having an "advanced flow" will make little difference as some applications will refuse to work if you have it enabled anyway (in the same vein if debugging is enabled, for example).
Nothing about Android is open except the absolutely minimum amount of linux kernel that's required to boot the thing. Then it's blobs and restrictions all the way to the screen.
Good news: You (as a community) can now finally wake up from your dreams and get some things right!
It's really a shame that you always wait until you really get forced. Particularly in situations when every individual's inability has consequences for the others as well. I really gave up all ideas of a better world. With this community, the best you can hope is that the decay will be slow.
So everyone who would describe himself/herself as a FOSS enthusiast, or at least a friend of a somewhat open system where the user has some actual rights beyond sole consumption, put some pressure towards having actually de-Googled systems. A system that mostly comes from Google, would not fit my definition of that term at all! Even if they removed some parts of it. It's an euphemism. And it's dangerous because you constantly get trapped by these euphemisms. Ever. Single. F'ing. Time.
Good thing restricting side-loading isn't legal in the European Union! Not a problem here. Apple had to enable side-loading on their EU-based phones and so will Google if they restrict it.
Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.
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The kind of "side-loading" of notarized apps outside the manufacturer's app store that Apple allows in the EU is exactly what Google proposed to do for all its Android builds. We don't want that.
How specific is the law? What if side loading requires a "trusted" signed certificate where trusted means from Google Play?
Not even playing devil's advocate, just wondering how many loopholes actually exist.
If a lawsuit tackles this problem in the EU, will we finally also see somebody go after MS for their obnoxious code signing certificates?
While MS code signing certs are more circumventable for power-users than Android's new approved developer program, their pricing is far more prohibitive for independent OSS developers and hobbyists, costing hundreds of USD per year.
Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem
Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone
Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.
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I understand why mobile/tablet OSs are so crappy compared to desktop; in the past these devices had no resources cpu and ram wise and had to heavily watch battery consumption (the latter is still true mostly, but that should be up to the user), but my phone is more powerful than my laptop and yet runs crap with no real usable filesystem and all kinds of other weirdness that's no longer needed.
However, I have 2 Linux phones and Linux on phones is just not there. Massive vendors (Samsung, Huawei, etc) would need to get behind it to make it go anywhere. Also so banking etc apps remain available also on those phones. We can already run android apps on Linux, Windows apps, so it would be a bright future but really it needs injections and support for large phone makers.
I hope the EU/US mess will give it somewhat of a push but I doubt it.
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I.. don't think it will happen. For several reasons too. It is not that I don't think Android will change substantially, but the following constraints suggest a different trajectory:
- AI boom or bust will affect hardware availability - there is a push on its way to revamp phones into 'what comes next' -- see various versions of the same product that listens to you ( earing, ring, necklace ) - small LLMs allow for minimal hardware requirements for some tasks - anti-institutional sentiment seems to be driving some of the adoption
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This is one of the most naive things I see people repeat.
The reality is that we're lucky to have mostly-good things at all that align with most of our interests.
Yet people get so comfortable that they start to think mostly-good things are some sort of guarantee or natural order of the world.
Such that if only they could just kill off the thing that's mostly-good, they'll finally get something that's even better (or rather, more aligned with their interests rather than anyone else's).
In reality, mostly-good things that align with most of our interests is mostly a fluke of history, not something that was guaranteed to unfold.
Other common examples: capitalism, the internet, html/css, their favorite part of society (but they have ideas of how it could be a little better), some open-source project they actually use daily, etc.
If only there weren't Android, surely your set of ideals would win and nobody else's.
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> death of Android
death of personal computing freedom, sovereign compute, and probably soon our ability to meaningfully contribute to the field as ICs?
A lot of really bad things are happening to our field, and Google is one of the agents responsible for much of it.
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>The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible.
I have trouble understanding why this is a threat to AOSP distribution. I would have said quite the opposite actually, I don't see why they would not remove the verification and that's an incentive for people to use their project instead of Google Android.
I like it, because more and more people see Google as what it is: a ruthless, selfish and extremely greedy mega-mega-corporation. The less we depend on it the better.
Who could Android be possibly recommended to at this point?
I know iPhones aren't affordable for the layman in many countries. But for anyone with an option, why would you buy an Android? All the "customization" things I cared about when I was on Android are either doable on an iPhone now with better implementation, or something I don't care about.
I was a die-hard until I went through enough cycles of Google deprecating and reinventing their apps and services every year, breaking my workflow/habits, that I got sick of them and moved to Apple everything. And all the changes I've seen since then are only making me happier I got out of the ecosystem when I did. Unlimited Google Photos backups with Pixels are gone, Google Play Music is gone, the free development/distribution environment is gone, etc.
If people can't even develop for the thing without going through the Google process, they're really just a shitty iOS knockoff.
But this thread is about the option to install apps on your device regardless of OS vendor approval, and that's not possible either with iOS nor is iOS open source. And that's what this is all about. If you don't care about open-source and user freedom, then this change wouldn't matter to you anyway.
I switched back to Android in large part for KDE Connect. You can get continuity esque features that work with any desktop operating system. I also get to use real Firefox instead of a Safari wrapper. I still use as few Google services as possible, pretty much just Maps.
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As someone who hates both android and iOS but currently has to use iOS, I definitely hate it more. It lacks so many things one can take for granted on android. Even a usable keyboard is missing from iOS.
I love the Java/Kotlin userspace, even if it is Android Java flavour, and the our way or the highway attitude to C and C++ code, instead of yet another UNIX clone with some kind of X Windows into the phone.
In the past I was also on Windows Phone, again great .NET based userspace, with some limited C++, moving into the future, not legacy OS design.
I can afford iPhones, but won't buy them for private use, as I am not sponsoring Apple tax when I think about how many people on this world hardly can afford a feature phone in first place.
However I also support their Swift/Objective-C userspace, without being yet another UNIX clone.
If the Linux phones are to be yet another OpenMoko with Gtk+, or Qt, I don't see it moving the needle in mainstream adoption.
> But for anyone with an option, why would you buy an Android?
How the heck this is true?!? iOS is just bad.
Its usability is bad, its interface is bad, its apps are just a ton of crap, and it _will_ keep getting worse.
I'm not even talking about its "walled concentration camp" app model.
you're a really vanilla user then.
wake me up when there's an adblocker on an iphone.
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At this point, I wouldn't recommend Android other than enjoying the much steeper discount with the headset. For me, the only thing that is keeping me on Android is easier access to commas on the keyboard.
The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us.
I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to develop their version and go the Apple way (which, funny enough, no one has a problem with). Development of AOSP can be controlled by a software foundation, like tons of other successful projects.
A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader.
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. And it all originally stemed from phone carriers wanting to lock customers into their services.
We need some pro-consumer regulations on hardware which mandate open platforms. Fat chance of that happening, though, as the likes of both the EU and US want these locked down systems so they put in mandatory backdoors.
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Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom.
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Even if locked bootloaders weren't a thing, not being able to just buy a phone with an open Android pre-installed means it would get relegated to the Linux Zone, with a whole lot of "security alert" and "device not supported". Also, low popularity leads to fewer development resources, so it would probably suffer from lack of polish.
People will keep using the OS their phone comes with and that would be Google's Android. It's worse than with Windows PCs and Windows to be honest because phones have a locked bootloader.
People give a lot of flack to the EU, but this is the sort of thing they would regulate.
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Or the fact that you need device drivers for every piece of hardware in a phone.
Yep, exactly why I've always supported the adoption of GPLv3. What point is there to FOSS if you cant use it?
A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.
There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that.
It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected.
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Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho.
What about the Android SDK? I don't think that this is open source, is it? As a developer, when you download an Android SDK you have accept a licence that is not open source, right?
Google's moat with Android is the same as it's moat with Chrome: complexity. There are very few entities that could fork Android.
The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control.
Under what law is that a legal or ethical thing to do? Why not suggest ios be taken away from Apple as well and windows from Microsoft?
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Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants.
The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.
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What is stopping a hard fork?
The same reason nobody is doing a hard fork of Chromium.
The gigantic task of maintaining and developing a mobile OS that needs to retain compatibility with AOSP/GPS anyway to tap into the huge amount of applications that are available?
It will cost a lot of money and as long as Google is still doing regular AOSP code drops, what's the point?
I contacted the EU DMA team about my concerns and got a real reply within 24 hours. Not just an automated message, it looked like a real human read my message and wrote a reply. I'd urge other EU citizens to do the same.
Great idea, I just did the same. I encourage other EU citizens to do the same. Keeping at least one of the two major mobile ecosystems open is important.
(And install GrapheneOS, the more successful open Android becomes, the better.)
GrapheneOS is great. But that currently means you have to buy a phone from Google to work around Google looking down Android.
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For posterity, what was their sentiment?
Wow, someone replied to an email. From the same organization that is pushing for chat control. That would give you hope... European tax payers have this funny belief that their bureaucratic overlords are all there in Brussels acting with the taxpayer's interest and privacy in mind. One can dream, I suppose...
EU did bring regulations that helped consumers. I have a feeling that criticism of EU regulations mostly come from people who are not in the EU.
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I am genuinely curious, what is your moral justification to attempt to use party A to forcefully influence how party B develops/sells *their* intellectual property? Party B owes you nothing. You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete. How do you justify it, and how would you feel if you were on the receiving end of such a dictum?
Well, Google has marketed Android as an open source operating system (AOSP) and openness about the system [1] and encouraged manufacturers and developers to build on it based on the premise of openness and of course being "free". People advocated for Android because it was open source compared to other alternatives. But with this change they are simply ending that openness. People that have developed F-Droid and other alternative stores have contributed to the platform value (such as not being able to de-google their phone), the same goes for many other developers who have spent countless of hours developing for Android.
To say they don't owe you nothing seems like a betrayal on the promise that Android was an open platform (and open source).
> You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete
That's not an option as you are making it out to be. For a user switching means buying a new phone, repurchasing apps (if you bought) and maybe apps won't be even available to the new system, for developers that means all their knowledge about the system gone. Building a mobile operating system requires millions if not billions of dollars, years of work and convincing developers and businesses (hardware makers) to use your operating system. The barrier to enter is so high that telling people to just compete with Google is not a realistic solution.
[1] https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-gl...
Party A does not owe Party B the right to sell in Party A:s legal area.
Party B is allowed to choose not to sell in EU. If you wanna sell in EU you have to comply with EU rules. If you wanna sell in US you have to comply with US laws. That simple.
Maybe "intelectual property" is really imaginary property given how the same big companies just gobble data from other people and companies wothout permission to feed their AI models (Facebook with books, recently NVIDIA with milions of videos from Youtube).
I guess they would not due that if they really believed some questionable synthetic construct like "intelectual property" really existed ?
That is not how the European Union works. One of the core goals of the EU is to guarantee the European single market. One of the core principles of the single market is the Freedom to establish and provide services [1]. The Apple/Google duopoly have effectively created a market within the single market where the core principles of the single market do not apply anymore.
Tech has a strong tendency to favor outcomes with only a handful large players that make competition impossible due to network effects, etc., distorting the market. The Digital Markets Act was made to address this problem.
IANAL, but Google's Android changes seem like a fairly clear violation of the DMA.
This is typically hard for people from the US to grasp (I saw that you are not originally from the US though). In Europe, capitalism is not the end goal, the goal of capitalism is to serve the people and if that fails, it needs to be regulated.
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As an aside, the lengths people go to defend a company with $402.836B yearly revenue :).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market#Four_fr...
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Are we still talking about massive companies with power to arbitrarily decide how billions of people use the personal computers they bought? Who's doing the feeling? Why would we presume all of their conduct to be moral?
> Party B owes you nothing. You are free to not use their products or start a company to compete.
When 99% of government/banks/etc require you to use a certain service to access basic services, you need some way of ensuring you don't have to sell your soul to use it. Alternatives would be really great, but Google is part of a duopoly.
Just because you build the rails doesn't mean you get to decide who gets to use the trains.
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My moral justification is that my right to do with the physical property I have in my physical hand is more important than any noncorporeal corporation's right to do anything with their noncorporeal intellectual property.
The truth is, I gave party C money for a product. Party B does not get to say anything about what party C gave me. And they absolutely do owe me something, and that is the use of the product they gave me for my money. Whatever their terms of service say about licensing versus owning should not trump the fact that I made a one-time purchase and I have physical ownership that they cannot revoke. This is not a car lease where I have a contract with the dealership and they can reposses the car if I don't make the payments.
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party B doesn't have "intellectual property" except by the dictum of party A, what is party B's problem, why would they make party A do that?
Google is engaging in immoral business practices. Since they are immoral, it is morally justified to say they must be stopped.
> how would you feel if you were on the receiving end of such a dictum?
I continue to be astounded how people still just flat out assume that everyone must be a capitalist.
If I were on the receiving end of a dictum aimed at stopping immoral behavior, I would cease my immoral behavior. But I'm not going to be on the receiving end in the first place because I don't aim to do immoral things in the first place.
Party A enforces Party B's intellectual "property"
Party B has access to the market of Party A at Party A's mercy.
So you're saying that if I open a restaurant I'm free to poison the food and you can just decide whether to eat there or not and no government should be able to forbid me to do this?
The moral justification is the same anyone else employs. I have a tool to create an outcome and I'm going to use that tool to produce that outcome. It's that simple.
I want Google to lock down their platform. Hardcore locked down. So locked down you can't do anything with it at all. Because people need motivation to do something hard.
Android has been a bloated walled garden for years. It should have been like a PC w/Windows or Linux: anyone should be able to make an app (any way they want), publish it, let anyone who wants to download it & run it. But that was never the plan. The plan was to provide a moat to allow mobile telephone operators (& Google) to dictate what users were allowed to do with their phones. Imagine your ISP having total control over your desktop computer. Or killing a website, or program, because the ISP doesn't like it.
It is insane that we, the people giving them the money and agency to do this, that we've allowed this to be the status quo. We need to do something about it. We need to kill Android. And from the ashes, make a new platform that works for us, and not for a corporation's profits and anti-competition.
Just to put out what Google actually said in their blog post [0]:
> We appreciate the community's engagement and have heard the early feedback – specifically from students and hobbyists who need an accessible path to learn, and from power users who are more comfortable with security risks. We are making changes to address the needs of both groups.
> We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to entry when building apps intended only for a small group, like family or friends. We are using your input to shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists. This will allow you to distribute your creations to a limited number of devices without going through the full verification requirements.
> Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren't tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. We are gathering early feedback on the design of this feature now and will share more details in the coming months.
It is also true that they have not updated their developer documentation site and still assert that developer verification will be "required" in September 2026 [1]. Which might be true by some nonsensical definition of "required" if installing unverified apps requires an "advanced flow", but let's not give too much benefit of the doubt here.
0: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
1: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
> We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to entry when building apps intended only for a small group, like family or friends. We are using your input to shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists. This will allow you to distribute your creations to a limited number of devices without going through the full verification requirements.
In classic Google fashion, they hear the complaint, pretend that it's about something else, and give a half baked solution to that different problem that was not the actual issue. Any solution that disadvantages F-Droid compared to the less trustworthy Google Play is a problem.
Even restricting the mitigation to "students and hobbyists" is bad.
I should have the right to have parents, friends or anyone use a "free" store that is not under control of Google if the user and app developer wish so. But also, somehow there should be something done to avoid the monopoly forcing to use the Google services. Like major institutions like bank, gov and co being forced to provide alternatives like a webapp when they provide app tied to the Google play store.
I think you've omitted the next section, which seems more relevant. It seems like they will still allow installs, just hide it behind some scare text. Seems reasonable?
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> shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists.
Even that is a step too far in the wrong direction. Doesn't matter if it's free, or whatever, simply requiring an account at all to create and run software on your own device (or make it available to others) is wrong.
There exists no freedom when you are required to verify your identity, or even just provide any personal information whatsoever, to a company to run software on your device that you own.
So basically the Apple model but worse.
This isnt going to be a popular post because the HN crowd is very much a "China bad" crowd but I hypothesize China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department. This might be in the form of commits and investment in fdroid and pinephone, or a tiktok like alternative to the wests walled garden.
Edit: this will likely exist "uncensored" in other markets but conform to the PRCs standards and practices domestically, similarly to how tiktok operated prior to selling a version specifically taylored to US censorship and propaganda.
Not a chance. A fork that is under China's control, maybe, but not an "open" fork. They don't even pretend to have that as a value.
You may theoretically find it advantageous to use such a system anyhow. To a first-order approximation, the danger a government poses to you is proportional to its proximity to you. (In the interests of fairness, I will point out, so are the benefits a government may offer to you. In this case it just happens to be the dangers we are discussing.) Using the stack of a government based many thousands of miles/kilometers away from you may solve a problem for you, if you judge they are much less likely to use it against you than your local government.
But China certainly won't put out an "open" anything.
Not sure if you have been following the LLM space or even the emulator handhelds space, but Chinese companies have been doing great with putting out open source software lately.
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The irony is that software coming from China is a lot more open than western software. Biggest examples are huggingface models mostly coming from Chinese institutions. Its also strategicaly wise for China to go this path.
https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text?license=open-source
Maybe a shift to Huaweis HarmonyOS with its android compatibility layer or SailfishOS if they play their cards right.
As far as HarmonyOS i dont see many uptakes outside strict US free requirements as the other OEMs are lazy and also dont want to be locked into a competitor.
SailfishOS looks like its your time to faceplant once more , by not having a proper stratergy on monetizing on the many missteps from the current monopoly.I thonk at this point they need a leadership/biz stratergy overhaul - the tech is nice and polished, user demand is off the charts for an alternative . And they are just .. missing. Not even in th e conversation.
As of version 5, HarmonyOS doesn't have the Android compatibility layer. There are emulators that allow APKs to run, but they're a bit clunky.
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> China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department.
Where you been? They already had Huawei get kickbanned by Google and made their own OS (it's not more open): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS
Pinephone is tragic, bought a bunch of Pine64's devices (PP, PPP, PB, PBuds, arm tablet, eInk tablet) but old tech, missing drivers, can't blame em no money no drivers... Still the community on Discord is great/helpful people.
> a "China bad" crowd
Government bad. Big government worse.
I don’t think China will do that at all. They’ll move to HarmonyOS.
As far as I know, China forbids open bootloaders on its territory so it's not where you'll see any open ecosystem.
Not Google controlled for sure but also not open.
That'd be great but I'm not feeling like the Chinese market is too worried about open development. I got a Huawei Watch 5 as a gift and I liked it enough to try to develop my own apps (their app store is a wasteland) but to my surprise Harmony OS is not Android compatible (just Android based somehow). The watch's developer mode is useless. Trying to register a developer account is almost impossible and it seems they only allow chinese nationals and there's no plan to open registration. I couldn't even download their custom IDE (something like Android Studio) without an account.
Maybe it's just my experience.
Competition needs to come from somewhere due to lack of antitrust enforcement in the US. If not China then hopefully elsewhere.
The US system is dying from lack of competition.
I would rather put my phone in the microwave than run Chinese Communist Party OS.
Half, or more, of the world thinks exactly the same in regards to the US
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Meanwhile the NSA and Mossad can see you fapping on your phone and scan your face in real time and you're implicitly fine with it
This is what lack of options does to a MF
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The judge told Google that Apple is not anti-competitive because Apple has no competitors on it's platform (this all stemming from the Epic lawsuits).
Google listened.
Blame the judge for one of the worst legal calls in recent history. Google is a monopoly and Apple is not. Simple fix for Google...
The link is to the f-droid blog. The official "Keep Android Open" site is at https://keepandroidopen.org/, and contains good information on how you can contribute by contacting regulators.
We ("you") have no power to keep android open. Unfortunately it is in the hands of a company that is building it for profit, in a way or the other.
It's been our choice to drink this glass of wishful thinking while giving that company a solid dominant position in the market.
We ("you") can only make choices that will overturn that trend.
Fully opensource hardware with fully opensource software? Maybe, but also this is wishful thinking.
It's also heavily influenced by businesses. Most employers will happily hand you an Apple or Android phone for work, but I don't think there is a single company out there that would dare to hand normal people an Ubuntu Touch based phone.
We (people who live in a country/confederacy with working antitrust laws) have power to keep large companies from anticompetitive practices such as this one.
If they close things up with no alternative, the free open source software will likely start to catch up. it will take a few years though. This could be a blessing in disguise.
There is just no reasonable way that the open source community can compete with a $3.8T company. And before you say something along the lines of, "But they don't need to compete, they just need to be good enough", that still requires business to put their apps on some open source app store and make them compatible with the open source OS, and there is close to zero incentive for them to do so.
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Somehow, Stallman returned.
Does this block something like Obtainium?
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.imranr.obtainium.fdroid/
This is sad as there’s been a real resurgence of gaming devices (Ayn Thor/Odin, Retroid pocket devices, Ayaneo, etc) moving to Android from Linux variants (Batocera, Arc, Garlic/OnionOS).
It’s sad but more of an incentive for folks to finally take Linux as a viable alternative, and build on efforts made by Valve with SteamOS.
Could anyone provide me some clarifications?
If I understood correctly, to "protect" users, Google wants to control what is installed on Android phones. I guess it means the Play store will be the only way to install an app, which in turn means: - That users won't be able to install what they want and that they would need a google account to install apps - That app developers have to go through google to distribute their apps, with identity verification etc. Obviously this is awful and would mean the end of F-droid and Aurora store etc. However, I'm also reading here and there that it is a threat to alternative ROMs. To me it sounds at the contrary as an amazing opportunity, as they can strip this verification and be the only truly open Android, or am I missing something? Why do people link this app verification thing with a possible closing of AOSP?
Also, Mozilla was already saying it 10years ago with Firefox OS but... The web is the platform. 90% of the apps out there could be websites. We have all technologies needed for this including offline with service workers. And it works on every damn platform, even the most obscure OS has a web browser. Don't want to be locked to an ecosystem? Just target the web!
90% of apps are just websites with a wrapper UI.
There's a lot of misinformation here.
> I guess it means the Play store will be the only way to install an app
No, non-Play stores will still work, but developers will need to register a developer account with Google that is tied to some real identity. They already need to do this to distribute through the Play store, but now it'll apply regardless.
This is to make it harder for scam apps to churn app signatures. Kind of like requiring code-signing, but with only one CA.
> That users won't be able to install what they want
No, sideloading will still work, but it won't work if the APK isn't signed by someone in the Google developer registry.
> and that they would need a google account to install apps
Nope.
> That app developers have to go through google to distribute their apps, with identity verification etc.
They don't need to distribute through Google, but they will need to be involved with Google and do identity verification.
> However, I'm also reading here and there that it is a threat to alternative ROMs. To me it sounds at the contrary as an amazing opportunity, as they can strip this verification and be the only truly open Android, or am I missing something?
You're being misinformed. They won't even need to strip the verification. The verification is only for certified Android -- OEMs that partner with Google. Custom ROMs and the OEMs that aren't certified (Amazon, some Chinese manufacturers) won't have verification.
The target audience for verification and who would ever use a custom ROM has basically zero overlap.
I mostly agree with your points.
> > That users won't be able to install what they want
> No, sideloading will still work, but it won't work if the APK isn't signed by someone in the Google developer registry.
So the user can't install what they want. They can only install stuff signed by developers Google has "approved".
Yes, in the happy situation this is everything except for developers that Google has revoked. But technically it is only approved developers.
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I would caution the decision makers on this. The line between a secure device and a useless toy is perforated and hard to see.
If I can't use banking or my NFC wallets on my phone, it has become 90% useless. The other 10% of usefulness is texting and calls, which every other phone can do.
Unfortunately, this mostly means using the closed android ecosystem.
I run Graphene on my Pixel and banking apps just work. There is no Google Pay, obviously, since Google dependencies have been stripped out from the system. I just carry a credit card.
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90% of your usage on your phone is banking apps or NFC payments? That seems hard to believe.
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No idea why you are even bringing this up. It works just fine right now.
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>this mostly means using the closed android ecosystem
Maybe, but there's no technical reason for this. As I've mentioned before, I can do banking just fine on my Gentoo machine where the entire corpus of software on it, is FOSS and compiled by myself.
To you.
Laptops exist.
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The line between a phone and a computer is what has been perforated. What I need is a modem. I don't need the modem baked into a computer that has a permanently affixed screen and battery. That then pretends to be some kind of secure enclave for my deepest secrets.
"Security."
As if I'm in the government or something. Why can't the people who need military level security get their own platform? Shouldn't they just have that already?
The shift towards locked-down ecosystems is concerning for developers. Openness isn't just about freedom; it's about the longevity of the hardware we own. If we can't side-load or audit, we're just renting the device
If they go through with this I am switching to iPhone because there at least I am told up front and am tried less like the a product to be sold to advertisers.
Whats Andy Rubins take on this ? The original developer/contributor to android os itself
I've finally started de-googling and removing google from my life as much as I can. It's difficult with how much of everything is soaked in Google. I'm sure other's here have gotten much further, but everything you do to reduce their monopoly control helps.
it's becoming ever more clear to me that i'll have at least two devices: one running software i trust, one running software corporates trust, with a very narrow pipeline connecting the two, if it all. my demon-haunted device can stay offline in my bag and get hotspot'd in to my trustworthy device as necessary.
not happy about it, but i don't see a path forward that lets one participate in the wider ecosystem and maintain their own sovereignty and sanity.
Periodic reminder (note, originaly posted in 2013): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
At the risk of posting memes to HN: https://imgflip.com/i/akp488
I remember not long ago arguing that having Chromium become a monopoly was a bad thing, as it would mean Google could totally twist the web standard in something much more closed. I think this is a prime example.
The biggest surprise I had in attempting to distribute my first Android app is how difficult it is to get beta-testers through the "standard" channels. It requires a 1 week review and 25 beta-users invited by email addresses
In contrast, Apple has a ~48 hour turnaround for reviews before you can upload to TestFlight and distribute a beta with a link
Not sure if I am in some "trusted developer" cohort on iOS but not Android - but the difference was enough for me to stop trying on Android
https://archive.is/https://f-droid.org/2026/02/20/ .htmlhttps://archive.is/https://f-droid.org/2026/02/20/twif.html
Amusingly, if Microsfot didn't have a such an awful reputation ( both recent and old ), their newly announced phones could have actually been a viable competitor.
I question whether an OS that has always been controlled by Google has ever been open.
Sure parts of it were, but Google has always remained in control of Android. Anyone who expected that to change (in favor of more openness) hasn't been paying attention to the actions of tech companies for the past several decades.
The relative openness is the reason I gravitated towards Android and Google. I've never really taken advantage of it, but it's nice knowing it's there and that my phone (a Google Pixel) is something I have more control over than with other vendors.
APKs were the only reason why I was using android in the first place
This is where I wish someone like MKBHD and others with big Android followings would speak up and say they will both blast this practice and not review any new Android phones/(Google) apps unless there's a full walk-back of this position.
https://archive.is/https://f-droid.org/2026/02/20/twif.html
Since smartphone apps are often times required to do banking or identifying yourself now and there's tons of special apps in order to use appliances, and by that I mean really the only way to use modern appliances is by a smartphone app, emulating an Android environment on a laptop or PC with a bluetooth dongle is essential if you want to leave that smartphone era behind you for good, but still be able to function in this society.
the frustrating part is that the "advanced flow" alternative Google mentioned still doesn't exist in practice. the media ran with the reassurance headline and most people think the issue was resolved.
EU should fork Android
Should device manufacturers be worried about this direction? Could they eventually be locked out too?
What would it take for Linux phones to gain the ability to run Android apps?
The Control Society is way lamer than I could have imagined. Deleuze! I demand a refund!
The number one problem is locked hardware
What people forget is that the real monopoly is in how the AOSP hardware OEM contract is written....
Remember how hard Amazon had it to attempt an Android fork?
I was due to OEM SOC access being locked out due to those contracts....
Any open source mobile OS attempting to complete with AOSP needs access to mobile OEM soc providers not touched by AOSP contracts and currently that is somewhat hard.
Android was never open. User apps are limited, only system apps can do X which means third party apps can't compete with Google and this is not a coincidence.
Let's focus on making it possible to use really open Linux systems on smartphones.
There are some functionality limited to google play services, but it really is not too much in my opinion.
The amount of open stuff that was migrated into the Play Services closed source blob over the years just keeps growing.
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I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I was talking about the whole permissions system where the user is a third class citizen. Device manufacturers are second class citizens (restricted by Google via CDD/CTS) and the only true winner on that system is Google.
Regarding some concrete examples - Google can deeply integrate Gemini, but a competitor can't do this and users get no final say here either. Competitors are restricted by the permission system, Google is not restricted at all.
While rooting can alleviate this to some extent, Play Integrity is there to make sure the user regrets that decision to break free..
Crazy idea: when companies change their product, they have to change the name.
Do you ever feel like the same food item doesn't taste the same it did 10 years ago? Maybe it's your memory being faulty or maybe the company got new management which decided to cut costs while keeping prices, extract the differential value from customer inertia and move on when the product stops being profitable.
Android is the same. Certain freedoms were a part of the offering - a part of the brand name. They no longer are. Not only should lose their trademark[0], they should be legally forced to change the name.
[0]: The purpose of which is to identify genuine product from counterfeits - in this case, the counterfeit just happens to be by the same company which released the original product.
>But Google said… Said what? That there’s a magical “advanced flow”? Did you see it? Did anyone experience it? When is it scheduled to be released? Was it part of Android 16 QPR2 in December? Of 16 QPR3 Beta 2.1 last week? Of Android 17 Beta 1? No? That’s the issue
A bit ironic to not believe Google is doing this. The same questions have same answers when asked about when Google is locking down side loading. A bit self-serving to pick and choose which things you want to believe are happening.
Google made the first move with their initial plan to lock it down, so the onus is on Google to calm the fears they caused if they don't want people to distrust them.
Just like Microsoft screwed up Windows, Google will screw up Android and people will move to Linux on PCs and some open version of Android, or Harmony, or whatever new mobile system comes up, on their phones.
Nothing lasts for ever. The sooner you make the switch, the better off you will be.
I wouldn't hold my breath:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/windows-11-has-hit-1...
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/
What is the advantage of moving sooner vs. moving later when rough spots have been smoothed over?
Looks like I'm staying in my custom ROM lol
> We see a battle of PR campaigns and whomever has the last post out remains in the media memory as the truth
You must find truth. Lies will find you.
Good thing
Capitalism is the privatization of human needs. As long as these tech platforms are owned privately they will be used to police and make money.
This view NEEDS to be central to the tech freedom rhetoric, else the whole movement is literally just begging politicians and hoping corporations do the right thing... useless.
Aren't the politicians or their appointed bureaucrats who'd be making all the decisions if these needs were government owned? Why would state control lead to less policing? What incentive structure would lead to innovation without a profit motive, when even the modern communist world relies on capital markets?
(these are honest questions and not "gotcha")
> Aren't the politicians or their appointed bureaucrats who'd be making all the decisions if these needs were government owned?
Well that would be true under a capitalist government.
> Why would state control lead to less policing?
Its not just "the state runs it", its "we actively become the state".
Collective ownership through peoples councils, peoples courts with a world view that keeps it all open: socialism.
The world view of not allowing individual ownership over collective goods, the world view of socialism, is the life line of the movement. The actual practice of daily democracy, of running production and of deciding social functions is everyones responsibility and it should not be left to what has become a professional class of liars.
Public office members, which should only exist where absolutely necessary, should be locals and serve as messengers with 0 decision making power. All power should be in the local councils. We can mathematically implement this today (0 knowledge proofs).
Every single book on socialism is on theory and practices of acheiving this. Thats what the "dictatorship of the proletariat is", the dictatorship of working people, collectively.
> What incentive structure would lead to innovation without a profit motive, when even the modern communist world relies on capital markets?
We've been innovating for hundreds of thousands of years before capitalism. You dont need to generate money to innovate, the innovation itself is the driver, AKA a better life. No need to lock and limit production behind the attaining of profits of those who lead it.
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Copyleft fixes this.
They have the incentive to never chose this.
If we force it upon them by begging politicians, corporations still have the incentive to find a way to remove it or circumvent it.
Youre playing the cat and mouse game because you've been taught that solving it is too extreme (thats not a coincidence).
We dont need to endlessly fight a whole class of people, capitalists, for them not to use the things we require against us. Only socialism can solve that.
From a marketing standpoint it seems like a baffling decision on Google's part.
I own a Pixel and while the hardware seems decent, I've had a buggy and annoying experience with Android, and it's been getting worse lately.
Are Google so high on their own supply that they think people use their phones out of preference for the OS? Because frankly it's not very good. That's like Microsoft thinking people use Teams because of its merits.
People buy Android phones because they can be had cheaper than an equivalent iPhone and because in spite of the buggy and inconsistent mess of an OS, you aren't beholden to Apple's regimented UX. Locking down Android will not give it a "premium experience"... It'll always just be "Temu iOS" at best.
Have you considered Graphene since you own a Pixel? It's a huge upgrade over the stock OS in terms of security, privacy and general reduction of bloat.
Yep it's definitely on my list but my Pixel is on its last legs and I'm considering going back to iOS.
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> "Temu iOS"
Come on, that's absolutely laughable.
There are several topics where Android is significantly ahead to the point that iOS is just a toy, and there are areas where the reverse is true.
And I say that as a recent convert, so it's not like I have a decade out of date view of any of the OSs. In my experience I had more visual bugs in case of iOS than android (volume slider not displaying correctly in certain cases when the content was rotated as a very annoying example).
>Come on, that's absolutely laughable.
It's not, though. Google phones are not going to suddenly become luxury devices.
It's going to remain at the same level of polish (i.e. mediocre), except now without the major selling point of being able to run your own apps and have alternative app stores, etc. Back around Ice Cream Sandwich or thereabouts they got rid of "phone calls only mode" and forced us to rely on their half-baked "priority mode" that's an opaque shitshow.
When my wife is on call she gets random whatsapp notifications dinging all night, whereas when I had an iphone I could set Focus mode and achieve proper "phone calls only".
Android is not good. I use it despite its flaws, because of the trade-offs, not because it's better.
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> Are Google so high on their own supply that they think people use their phones out of preference for the OS? Because frankly it's not very good
Honestly having gone back and forth between iOS and Android every three years or so, both OS are the same. It's not like the grass is really greener on the Apple side. The UX is virtually identical for anything that matters. Personally I put material Android above liquid glass iOS. The alleged polish of the Apple UX was lost on me when I had my last iphone.
The reason Google's moves are surprising has more to do with them embracing being a service player more and more with the arrival of Gemini and them having regulators breathing down their necks everywhere.
I guess they did it after the truly baffling US decision in the Epic trial but it's very likely to go against them in the EU.
The rumors that I have heard (and one government document I read that was poorly translated from Thai) is that there are some countries who are pressuring Google on this to combat info-stealing malware. Apparently, account-takeover/theft is very prevalent in SE Asia where most banking is done via Android phones.
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https://postmarketos.org/
It's time to say goodbye.
I love postmarketos, but there is not even one "Main" phone with all of the hardware feature supported.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
Fairphone 4 looks close, hopefully fairphone 4 support will continue to improve at this rate. Pinephone is another close one, but underpowered hardware and camera support kills it.
I am not even that intensive of a phone user. but there is no way I could daily drive pmOS.
>F-Droid Basic Great, now they can spread themselves even thinner. Just revert the entire trash rewrite from years ago. Problem solved