I did my part!
What has happened with mobile platforms has proven that the fact that we ended up with PC platforms that allow us the freedom to largely do whatever we want with them was more an outlier than the norm.
Apple and Google have gone out of their way at every step with their new platforms over the last 20 years to make sure that process does not repeat itself. Even the stuff that seems more open like Android technically supporting arbitrary app installs from anywhere and the Linux container in ChromeOS still allows the platform holder to step in and stop you from doing something with those tools should they desire using mechanisms that the OS depends on to be useful.
Some poignant questions for these new platform requirements:
- How do you anticipate this being used against journalists and advocacy groups?
- What research and statistical quantification will be done to evaluate the amount of harm these restrictions can inflict?
- What precautions or safeguards will users have against malicious state actors or capitulating corporations?
- How can developers protect themselves from liable damages due to service interruptions caused by third party verification?
- Do you foresee legal restrictions in rollout due to national security concerns from differing nation states?
Just today apple showed how stupid is this policy as they revoked the publisher certificate for a torrent app, proving that the end goal is not locking malware but stuff that they don’t like
What a disappointing week. I was looking to replace my five year old iPhone with an android phone and now I’m just stumped. Pixel 10 looked pretty good but then this sudden verification requirement news hit. Both platform are now equally crap. The hell with both of these shitty companies. Maybe I’ll go full retro and get a dumb phone instead.
Get a pixel secondhand and put an android fork on it. Its what I will likely do because I am sick of Google in my life and dont want to pay through the nose for a glossy shit that doesnt even have a file manager from apple.
iOS/iPad OS has had a file manager for years? It’s not great, and heavily restricted, but it for sure exists.
You will own nothing, and be angry. But you can’t do diddly squat about it. Now open wide and BOHICA.
This is just a way to capture negative feedback in a way that leaves you feeling like you did something while impacting none of their business which they can then ignore and throw away with no issues. Make noise on social media, not feedback forms. Make them hurt.
Straight into the garbage.
I couldn’t tell from the article, but does this impact ALL apps that do NOT go through the Google Play Store?
What about 3rd party App Stores? Amazon has one, there is also the FOSS app stores like F-Droid. Are those in or out?
F-Droid would likely be out because they rebuild many apps from source.
I have a feeling that this is a retaliation for those as Epic is leading a charge against Google Play, and rightly so, not that they are an ally. I just like watching pigs fight.
https://techbriefly.com/2025/08/01/epic-games-store-coming-to-google-play-after-court-win/
as long as your phone have GMS preinstalled and listed under Google certification. this will affect you. So, Chinese phone without GMS is fine.
Come on, they don’t care. I will use a custom mod for as long as possible and when this stops working I will switch to two phones setup: de-googled daily driver and second phone for work/car apps. And if I will have to choose between stock Android and iPhone for the second phone I will go with an iPhone.
This is silly. Google doesn’t give a single fuck. This decision will make money for key players and that’s the end of the conversation.
It’s very likely that no amount of negative feedback will change anything. Why not waste some of their time anyway? Write to them, call them, spread the word. This is the only thing we can do. Even if it goes through regardless - at the very least we can make it as unpleasant as possible.
Their AI will be looking over all of the responses, not people. No important person at Google’s time will be wasted on this.
That’s why keywords are important. For instance I added the fact that if they continue in this course I will seek to de-Google my phones.
Like I said in another comment, unless they get tens of millions of actual unique-not-spam responses they will not even consider reconsidering. People aren’t going to de-google in any great numbers from this, because most of the people this will affect are already de-googled.
No humans are involved in reviewing these. They go into the memory hole and that’s that.
Assigned to: Some Indiandude (xWF)
I dunno, I’m sure there’s a part of them that doesn’t want to scare off all the free labor they get from the community developers. They are probably legitimately trying to gauge how much of an impact on that this will have. That doesn’t mean they are going to stop or change anything, but they probably genuinely care enough to know.
I dunno, I’m sure there’s a part of them that doesn’t want to scare off all the free labor they get from the community developers.
Google’s thinking has gone short term “next quarter must go up.” They would absolutely trash their Android dev community for a quick buck, 100%.
This is the exact same argument the Hackintosh community had. “Apple will never put a stop to us, we’re the hardcore tinkerers who find bugs in their software before any normal user!”
Google doesn’t care. The hardcore users on the bleeding edge make up 0.001% of people with an Android phone. Pissing them off will not affect the shareholders.
Doesnt matter.
Give feedback and pray it somehow does something!You do it for posterity reasons
Closing the side loading option is a path to antitrust suits, a slap in the face to privacy, a kick in the teeth to independent devs and personal use.
There is zero reason for this other than wanting full control of how I use my own phone and how much money/data google can squeeze out of everyone.
I did not purchase a phone to have it later be functionally broken as features it had have been stripped in the name of ‘security’.
A warning message is all that is needed. The current toggle is enough.
We are not toddlers.
There are not possibly enough cases that it warrants such a restrictive policy aside from the stated reasons above.
Give me liberty or give me symbian.
How’s that?
Give me liberty or give me
symbianmaemoFTFY
Symbian had package signature fuckery :/
Another reason why it worka in place of the word death in that phrase.
My only real experience with symbian was waaaaay back when I did tech support for l Sony Ericsson, and while I was more into modding the phones (remember those days?) and playing worms on a 1.5" screen on the walkman line of phones, I did have the p900 and the p1i.
And let me tell you, OS aside, the P1i was indestructible.
One exceptionally intoxicated weekend, the gf and I got into a bit of a tiff.
She grabbed the phone and threw it out the door or the apartment, onto that polished rock type floor.
It impacted as one would expect.
Shattered into a hundred pieces.
But… The screen was the old capacitive touch type, so it was a layer of plastic with a layer of plastic with a layer of plastic with ultra thin wires with a layer of plastic with a layer of glass with a layer of plastic with a layer of metal backing, and the rest of the internals were modular with push in/flip down cable clips that easily separated. The entire body was plastic.
I laughed.
(I’d taken it apart before because mods)
I picked up the parts, put them together as I walked out and turned it back on.
Anyway, symbian.
Oh, the memories.
if this policy is implemented. the easiest thing for noobs will be get a Chinese phone without certification from Google https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices.html like huawei (you can get a GMS support with emulator like Gbox)
The problem I see is that the independent app market will not survive this if the audience of “normal” Android devices is gone. Most devs won’t bother developing apps that are not available on the play store, so alternative roms are not a solution in most markets.
They will for the Chinese market, whatever that’s worth.
Public pushback on stuff like this does work on occasion. It even worked on Apple when they proposed upload filters for CSAM.
Google’s intent in the short term probably is just about malware, but in the long term it gives them, and governments which can pressure them the ability to ban any app from nearly all Android devices. Once deployed, there’s a near 100% chance of such a mechanism being used for evil.
The malware argument falls like a house of cards when you just dig a bit nd see that Play Store is full of indiscutible malware like flashlight “apps”.
I don’t buy the malware arguement. Most major social apps function like malware (tracking location and anything they can). In the 90s, any app that did that (say to your laptop) would be treated as spyware.
Also the true malware is currently signed and it still reaches millions of people, most of the time downloaded straight from store.
It’s only spyware if Google can’t monetize it. Which is ironic if you think about it.
No doubt many “legitimate” apps, including some of Google’s own are spyware. This claims to be about the sort of malware that steals your bank account login.
I’d even speculate that most of the people involved are working in good faith; they think they’re the good guys and they can be trusted with that kind of power. Nobody should have that kind of power though because it always leads to corruption.
I would love to see an interview with the team. Because you’re probally right.
I would argue that was the definition even in the early 2000s. then it became a business model for famous companies.
True, even in the early 2000s, an application tracking your laptop locations would be treated as extremely dangerous spyware and the relevant could would be treated as a borderline criminal actor.
Apple is a bit more receptive to bad PR, but Google has a history of kinda ignoring developer feedback, like with the JPEG XL thing as a narrow example.
This is an especially technical matter to; it’s no threat to them.
Google aren’t opposed to evil any more though, they removed their motto of “Don’t Be Evil”.
Alphabet Agency company was never opposed to evil. They’re like the "nice” drug dealer giving you what you like until you keep coming back. Or the guy in the van giving out free candy.
I thought their intent was to (attempt to) reduce piracy
Their intent is to reduce people running software they didn’t purchase through their commissioned store.
I did it and I told them exactly why and what I use and why and hopefully they will take heed. It’s not even some freakishly avoid-y reason or anything. I’m not extremist because I know that if I’m going to use a lot of this stuff I have to make compromises because it’s not magically going to get better overnight, but also we have to stand up for user freedom so we have some degree of ability to actually use our devices as we wish and install software that we want on our own computer.
Were you able to sign up and give feedback without verifying your identity first?
