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.
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.
Your reasoning shows why it's so much harder to fix a duopoly than to fix a monopoly. If there was no Apple then Google would get its comeuppance. If there was no Google then Apple would get its comeuppance. But because we have both Google and Apple, we can't punish either.
The mathematician in me wants to solve the problem of the duopoly by first reducing it to a monopoly, which we have known solutions for.
We both agree that there is a speed limit and it needs to be adhered to, regardless of who it is.
The problem with Google is that it may have started at 8 over the limit, but it advertised itself as sticking to the limit but always hovered slightly above it pushing the boundaries. This has skewed our perception into believing that Google's was acceptable and we have been gradually raising our threshold itself to a dangerous level.
Now Google is not too far behind Apple that it can't catch up.
Give it up. Stop defending your position when it's been pointed out that you are holding the two companies to two different standards. It's all right to admit you were wrong and learn something, even on the internet.
On the contrary, defending Google by bringing up Apple in this context is about as cut and dry as whataboutism gets. What Google is doing is wrong, full stop. Anything else is in addition to and also irrelevant.
No, that will only lead to bickering which one is worse and nothing getting done. Start with anyone. If you determine A is breaking the law then you go after A and fire anyone who pulls any "buuuut what about B" distractions.
I don't think Google is moving to disallow them, it's more that the EU said that it's fine for Apple to still own app notarization / developer verification even outside of Apple's app store. Google saw this and said, cool, we'll add that to Android too so we can also get our (undeserved) cut outside of the Play Store. I can install F-Droid or anything else, but if they dont submit papers to Google, I get a big scary warning when I install it (I get the same scary warning if a developer distributes apps through F-Droid, but doesn't verify with Google, which is ridiculous too). On iOS if I don't submit to Apple I cant do anything.
It all sucks, and I'm not saying this is a good thing. But Google and Apple are both trying to position themselves as not having monopolies on store fronts, while still forcing notarization and verification to run through them independent of the store being used. And the EU seems fine with this for some insane reason. Google isn't trying to be worse than Apple, they're trying to match Apple.
It's also worth noting that Microsoft has been doing the same thing just in a more mob like "shame if we and our antivirus partners would defame you" kind of way instead of outright disallowing unsigned programs for now.
Google are trying to match Apple's worst behaviour.
Next will be USA deciding that it's illegal to use the new Chinese offerings that will pop up to work around Google/Apple shittiness, because unconstitutional market manipulation goes hand-in-hand with USA's Russian-style oligarchy.
How long before Linux is added to the USA regime list of software that 'shows someone is a terrorist'.
Honestly still one of the main reasons why I am actualy considering switching to iPhone. Atleast with Apple I know what to expect. And as a bonus I get amazing vertical integration and probably the best aftermarket there is.
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.
I think the old reddit redirect extension gets around this somehow, that has worked for me lately (occasionally with some toggling of the extension). Although maybe it's best to just use less reddit tbh
But it's a good thing, actually because:
- when reddit is good it's way to addictive
- reddit has become nearly as bad as most other social media sites
So if they force me to use an account, I'll finally be able to kick the habit ;-)
There is a cookie that you can set to still get the old interface without login on www.reddit.com (but NOT on old.reddit.com) which some of the deshittify-redditi extensions have added. But I wouldn't expect that to stick around - it's just there for now to soften the outrage.
Make that 'since forever'. But there used to be a lot of insightful discussion inbetween the facebook-like parts. (Maybe it was the same on facebook, I wouldn't know because I never had a facebook account and you can't access the site without it.)
But I deleted my account (or at least randomized my password) somewhere in 2016 or so, so apparently 10 years ago I decided I wanted out. But I'm still reading it at least as much as HN. So fingers crossed they screw up badly enough this time :-D
You don't always need an extension to use old.reddit.com, it's an actual setting if you're logged in.
The real problem is that old.reddit.com and its ecosystem are all becoming worse and worse. Just off the top of my head, things like image galleries, message notifications, RemindMe bot, RES, /r/random, etc all have various problems and breakage.
I resigned as a mod after the API shitshow and am so glad I did. It’s a terrible site. I wind up there every month or two from friends or looking something up, it’s hard to see how much of a cesspool it is when you’re so invested in it and up close.
I noticed that reddit was setting a use_redesign (I might have the name slightly wrong) cookie when I explicitly visited the old.reddit domain, and this caused old reddit to persist. Since I do occasionally want to use the new site for image posts and the like, I set up a bookmarklet to set/unset that cookie on command.
I've since found that setting this cookie bypasses the old.reddit login page, allowing me to view the old site while not logged in. No idea how long that will last though.
I actually think the menacing messages are on point but should apply to play store apps as well. Most of the people I know are incredibly cavalier about running mystery software from unfamiliar developers on by far the most sensitive device that they own.
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?
The goal is not to prevent a Google monopoly. The goal is to have competition to prevent Google abusing its monopoly to lock down users.
There is Samsung Galaxy store.There is Xiaomi store.There was Amazon app store which failed to gain traction as it was not pre-installed but had decent number of apps. This is even before we get to open stores like F-droid.
Now their viability is a question in the long term, if Google has complete discretion over what is allowed.
> There was Amazon app store which failed to gain traction
I also heard that dev's couldn't remove apps they, for whatever reason, no longer supported. Even if the developers abandoned Amazon's app store entirely, the old bitrotted apps would still be there. The 1-star reviews would pile up, biasing users against them on other platforms.
Google doesn't have complete discretion. On Samsung phones, Samsung's discretion overrides Google's. On Xiaomi phones, Xiaomi's discretion overrides Google's.
Not really. Google sets strict boundaries for smartphone brands on what they can do software-wise. For instance, iirc, shipping the phone primarily with a non-Google alternative ROM means you won't get any play services on them, even if you want to have a secondary version with a standard Google ROM.
Google has essentially full control. Because they own security updates. Because banking apps already now often do not work without Google services. Etc. Etc.
It is a monopoly (regarding Android app developers), and is increasingly exploiting that to cash in.
Actually, the phone doesn't have play services if the vendor doesn't install play services. If the vendor installs play services then it has play services.
> For instance, iirc, shipping the phone primarily with a non-Google alternative ROM means you won't get any play services on them, even if you want to have a secondary version with a standard Google ROM.
Is this wrong? Sure they have agreements but does it include "don't sell phones with alternative ROMs"? It's licensed software and I don't think the phone makers want to end up on the wrong side of a Google lawsuit.
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.
There are solutions and then there are workarounds. what we see are workarounds, not solutions.
Even in software, you can only patch so many workarounds without fixing the issue. Eventually fatigue sets in or we run out of workarounds and just publish the bug as "expected behavior" don't we?
I don't want the workarounds to distract from the need for a proper fix.
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.
I am really hoping Google forces everyone to use signed apps Play Store. That is the only thing that will make people stop using Google/Android, to develop a real, actual, not-just-a-bad-fork-of-Android alternative mobile platform. Otherwise everyone will keep putting up with the bullshit because it's not painful enough yet. The OS will keep getting more bloated and slow. We'll all be forced by the constant churn of breaking changes to keep buying new phones when the old ones work fine. And the surveillance state of an authoritarian country has instant root access on half the devices on the planet.
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.
>> 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?
- the "24 hours" is Google's first formulation of plausible deniability. They've likely done testing to hone that number to find a sweet spot.
- the "24 hours" is enforced by remotely-run code, meaning Google remains in control of it and can unilaterally alter how this works, any time they feel like.
Imagine you went to the shops, and found that one shop, while it had the goods on display, and could totally just let you pick them up and buy them, was required by the shop next door to make you go away and come back no sooner than 24 hours later. Meanwhile, the shop next door is right there, and it's open, and it has no such restriction.
On what planet do you think anyone other than the most dedicated of dedicated people would choose the shop that requires waiting a whole day to use it when the alternative has no such restriction?
> unverified developers
The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google. That's the whole fucking point. Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
> On what planet do you think anyone other than the most dedicated of dedicated people would choose the shop that requires waiting a whole day to use it when the alternative has no such restriction?
I have no clue what you're referring to or worried about here, could you clarify? Are you worried Android is going to lose power users to iPhone? What are the alternative shops you're referring to here? We're not buying pastries.
> The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google.
"Unverified" in my comment was a shorthand for "unverified by Google", not an insult.
> Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
The complain about that? Rather than wasting time complaining about the 24h wait?
I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer). The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it. (And yes, it could have been chosen for plausible deniability.) Is your actual problem the wait itself, or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
> What are the alternative shops you're referring to here?
In this analogy, the alternative shop that is preventing you from buying stuff from its competitors without a 24 hour wait is the Play Store monopoly.
> but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
Then in this hypothetical world where there were a free market for verifiers rather than a single, monopolistic choice, I would choose another alternative verifier that doesn't make me wait 24 hours, or no verifier at all.
> Are you worried Android is going to lose power users to iPhone? What are the alternative shops you're referring to here? We're not buying pastries.
Are you 13 years old? Who in their right mind would even care that "all the power users" went and bought iPhones? Are thoughts like this keeping you up at night?
> I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
It's your imagination that's failing; we don't want ANY verifier at all, whatsoever. Nobody should be able to reach into my phone OS and have a say regarding what I can install or not.
> The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it.
"Security mechanism" to protect WHO from WHAT, exactly? And please don't repeat the drivel about scams that Google's pushing, we all know those are excuses, "It's for the CHILDREEEENNNN!!!!" sure.
> or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
So you DO know what's going on! In that case I have no idea why you're arguing in favor of having a gate placed in front of our [personal, owned] phones to regulate what we do with our own devices.
> So you DO know what's going on! In that case I have no idea why you're arguing in favor of having a gate placed in front of our [personal, owned] phones to regulate what we do with our own devices.
Then you're not understanding anything I'm writing, and I don't have the energy to keep going.
All I'm saying is that you need to pick your battles carefully and be honest about your goals if you want to have a fighting chance of winning this war against general-purpose computing. I want to win this just as much as you. I don't want to lose it, and I certainly don't want to lose it in a dumb way. Dying on the wrong hill during the wrong battle because people on my side constantly lie, exaggerate, and otherwise misrepresent reality and turn away would-be supporters is probably the dumbest way to see this happen, and it should make you angry, if you actually want some success in what you're doing.
Just wanted to amend this to note that what I wrote also applies to the war against ownership, etc... I'm making no attempt to be exhaustive here, just trying to get a larger point across.
About that... you might be interested that private property ownership in general is the result of similar kinds of onerous and exploitative processes. Anthropologists and historians have done a bunch of research on this for a while, and one of the interesting narrative texts about this is Engels'
I agree wholeheartedly, but you can already unlock and root your phone and install whatever you want. This is not that battle. Mind you, I don't like either of these, but they're very different in nature.
And if I want to run the stock OS I paid for, with apps of my choice? It feels like a bait and switch to lock down the OS like this after you've sold the device.
This is the stock OS you paid for. It's beholden to Google and subject to their updates as it always was. You can either flash a different OS entirely, or even break their ability to update it before the change rolls out, if that's what you want. What I think you really want is to pick and choose what updates you get, which I would love too, but that's neither here nor there.
So we started with an OS (when Google still needed to gain market share and goodwill) which was opensource. Now Google is no longer developing Android source code in the open and decreasing the "opensourcing" to a couple of source drops each year (the interval has been decreased multiple times). Google Play was introduced (basically clamping down the app store ecosystem) and from there Google has only made it harder to get around Google Play. Introducing things like phone attestation. Supposedly a security measure, yet for some reason a Samsung phone which hasn't had an update in 4 years still passes basic level attestation. And now Google is yet again making it harder to get around the Play store.
And for some reason you seem to think it is reasonable to assume it is going to stop here?
> And for some reason you seem to think it is reasonable to assume it is going to stop here?
I really don't. That is, actually, my entire point: people are going to roll their eyes at this right now. And then you're going to lack/lose the supporters you'll need when things really get bad.
Things are really bad already on Android. Most bootloaders are locked, Google prevents you to use the very few unlocked ones through the (legally questionable) Play Integrity. AOSP is basically dead (it doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays, can it still be called a phone?) and now they are further locking direct installs
> Things are really bad already on Android. Most bootloaders are locked, Google prevents you to use the very few unlocked ones through the (legally questionable) Play Integrity. AOSP is basically dead
This feels like complaining about the color of the bikeshed, me saying you should save your complaints for when things get really bad, and you replying "things are really bad already, there is a rotten carcass in there and the roof leaks."
Okay, so let's keep complaining about the color then.
What would be "really bad" for you? Non-google Android is dead outside of China and you can't realistically distribute software either without a Google stamp.
I don't see much difference between Android and iOS in terms of openness nowadays personally.
"Block[ing] 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"
...would be "really bad" in my view.
Which is probably exactly why they worded it that way, despite knowing fully well they are (rather blatantly) lying. They literally explained how to avoid it themselves further down below, after you've already been angered.
> "Block[ing] 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"
Personally for me, a fake convoluted opt-out is the same as no opt out so we're already there.
Even Fortnite failed to distribute outside the Play Store, if they can't despite being famous, well you can't.
> Personally for me, a fake convoluted opt-out is the same as no opt out so we're already there.
Convoluted, yes, but fake? Aren't you just repeating the same lie? That means it looks like it bypasses the verification but doesn't actually do so. What are you basing that off of?
I'm talking about it as an app distribution method from the perspective of a developer and an app distribution method you can only ask a few people on Github to perform definitely isn't a valid one to me.
> I'm guessing you've never shown up to a foreign country without a phone. First thing I do after I get through customs is find the phone store.
Indeed I have not. In fact I haven't even heard of people doing this until your comment. And that's before unknown app developers coming into the picture. I assume you do this to avoid border phone searches? And you feel the (ostensibly) security-related mechanisms for the rest of the world to be centered around this use case? Meaning the rest of the world should pay the cost to their own security to cater to this flow?
I just print out all my stuff and go old school. Pick up a cheap android phone at the airport and go about my business. Not sure why this is uncommon. Maybe I'll switch it up next time and bring my phone loaded up with dick pics.
Why shouldn't people be free to install their preferred software immediately after purchasing a phone? How does it help anyone other than Alphabet shareholders to restrict that?
I have experienced people bringing their phone only to find out that it doesn't support the mobile technologies and frequencies required to connect to local carriers.
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.
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.
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.
