Comment by amiga386
5 days ago
Not Google's first rodeo. They pulled the same move in 2019: https://www.phoronix.com/news/WireGuard-Ejected-Play-Store
This is why software should not be subjected to an "app store" type distribution system, where a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes.
You can install from other stores (AnkiDroid is on F-Droid, for example), or from direct file download on Android already. The problem is rather thay most users just use the store preinstalled on their phone as part of Google's deal with OEMs to bundle Google Play Services. So either you follow Google's rules, or you lose all the users who don't want to leave the walled garden, even though they can.
When do we stop this instinctive response of "well you can still do it in an only slightly convoluted way" everytime a corporate does something bad.
Windows added ads - well you can disable them, if you don't like it.
Chrome brought up mv3 - well you can still use mv2, it is only optional.
Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit
Android moving everything to playstore - there's always FDroid.
How many of these are still true and for how long?
If someone's country is a dictatorship, it doesn't help to tell them that there are 100 other democratic countries, just move. Not everyone can emigrate or want to emigrate for any number of reasons.
Imo if you compare what Google does to the one other mobile OS manufacturer with any users, claiming Google should be fined is something like the cop pulling you over for going 8 over the speed limit while Apple is doing triple digits and just ran two people over.
'Why not both' is an argument, but clear as day what Apple does is worse. There's no alternative.
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The frog is boiling slowly.
Google is breaking fdroid in less than a month left for sideloading: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registrat...
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https://srinagar.nic.in/notice/immediate-suspension-of-virtu...
They banned "VPN"
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-vpn-ban-in-k...
Then came arrests.
https://www.medianama.com/2026/01/223-jammu-kashmir-vpn-ban-...
Street level checks. Police literally stop you roadside and check your phone for VPN.
This is happening in 2026. RIGHT NOW.
I talked to some officials and "oh you know what happened in Delhi blasts? They were using signal. If we had only caught them before".
Actually old reddit doesn’t work that way anymore lol you must login or use crappy reddit, which is exactly to your point though! They will just keep making it harder and harder until you simply can’t, but by then so a few people will be “opting in/out” that they’ll argue nobody wants the ability to toggle that anyway.
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> Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit
old.reddit is now locked behind login as well.
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The amount of time I've spend to turn off news and ads in Windows is absurd. Just to be turned on in a new update.
And the menacing messages of installed something from F-Droid. My mother would never do it. Even my programmers colleagues usually don't do it.
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The "convoluted" way is/was the default in the absence of a monopolist app store. Before centralised app stores, users downloaded or bought boxed software ad-hoc and installed it on their computers from installation archives, just like you can install apps from APK files on Android. If you banned Google from preloading their app store, isn't that what we would revert to?
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old.reddit is also locked behind a login wall too, now!
While I agree with your point, conflating the effort to install apps outside of the Google Play Store with the effort to immigrate to a different country is wildly incomparable.
old.reddit now requires a login :/
macOS slowly ramping up the friction to run unsigned/unapproved apps over the years
sometimes people share a problem and want solutions or workarounds
other times people share a problem and just want to feel validated ("yeah that sucks dude")
it sounds like you wanted the 2nd but got the 1st
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Yeah, not for much longer though: https://keepandroidopen.org/
Thanks for sharing.
Everyone is speed running towards a future where you need a permit to write software.
Try to run a binary that doesn’t have the right cert( or whatever it’s called on Windows) and you get a bunch of warnings.
Even if Android is open , normal people will only use the App Store. I can imagine China forcing Apple to allow 3rd party installations of software one day .
The EU did something where to my knowledge Apple still gets a cut of each sale.
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Wow. The click the build number a bunch of times is already onerous enough. Now we're going to have to wait 24 hours to spin up a new development device?
Google is making it increasingly difficult to freely install software from app stores that they don't control and tax. Quoting https://keepandroidopen.org :
> Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
> Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
> Google's "escape hatch" is a trap door
>> Wait 24 hours
>> Pick "allow temporarily" (7 days) or "allow indefinitely
Geez. I don't like what they're doing either but this fear-mongering is not helping your cause. So the "trap door" here is just that you can't buy a phone and immediately start loading apps from unverified developers onto it until 24h have passed? Of all the hills we could be dying on, that's the one we're picking?
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No, you can't; not without jumping through hoops, not without clicking on fake warnings, not without a song and a dance about fake "saving you from scammers" scare tactics.
Please stop covering for Google. They're behaving badly, people are reacting, stop with the "Achucally..." which is pretty grating and cringe worthy.
But not for long. Sideloading is being frowned upon by the mighty G
s/sideloading/not using the play store/
It's not "sideloading" it's just "installing software" don't help legitimize this stance that google is meant to be the official arbiter of what I do on a device I own.
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> you lose all the users who don't want to leave the walled garden, even though they can.
I think it's moreso you lose all the users who don't realize anything outside the walled garden even exists.
if no one used alternative stores, there'd be no reason to ban them, and yet google is banning them.
99.99% of the typical mobile phone users will not be able to implement your advice and the 0.01% that can already knows.
It's honestly not that big of a problem. Probably some anti-trust legislation can/should be passed to make installing F-Droid and the like easier, but it's already pretty easy. If enough popular apps start requiring you to install them through F-Droid then that'll become normalized and Google will lose its soft monopoly in this space, which is an outcome I'm all for.
Google is making it much more difficult and annoying to install F-Droid and any apps from there RIGHT NOW.
To the point where it will cease to be a viable way of distribution for any app that wants to attract an audience larger than the handful of power users.
There is no reason at all to defend them.
if you havent been paying attention, google is REEEEALLY into monopolies and fascism. Google literally jumped out of their pants to change the name of lake ontario the second trump said to.
app stores always seemed dystopian to me
To me it's not really the concept of the app store that's dystopian, it's not that different from a deb or rpm repository. What is dystopian is the level of control the OS vendor maintains over the entire ecosystem.
>it's not that different from a deb or rpm repository
The difference is that the default app stores require you to make an account to be able to use them. This would rightfully be considered insane on desktop OSs, yet is considered normal for phones.
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