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Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

9to5google.com

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Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#411

Post by tomhow »

panja wrote: post #389

[flagged]

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45021560 and marked it off topic.

Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#412

Post by pabs3 »

sebastiennight wrote: post #154

So what are our options (eg for EU citizens) for lobbying in terms of legislation or directly to Google to show disagreement with this? It looks like many in this thread are against, but I don't see suggestions for action?

We need to lobby for choice at every stage. You must be able to choose which network, which phone, which OS, which app stores, which apps.

Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#413

Post by bitwize »

Sorry, folks, the good times are over. The future of computing is a signed, attested chain of trust from boot firmware through application code, on all platforms people are likely to use -- and remote attestation with user identification if you wish to connect to the network. End users love it because it prevents or reduces all sorts of malicious activity, from bank fraud down to online game cheating, with little to no effort on their part; platform vendors love it because it provides a moat; service providers (banks and such) love it for the assurance that their clients are uncompromised; and governments love it because it lets them surveil users and developers.

The only ones who hate it are devs. And who really cares about a bunch of nerds?

Remember, general purpose computing really boils down in security terms to "arbitrary code execution" -- a bad thing in the infosec field.

Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#415

Post by earthicus »

throw10920 wrote: post #393

This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that. The problem is that most normal people (HN is not normal - mostly for the better) don't even understand what sideloading is - let alone actually care . How can we fix this? (aside from making people care - apathy enables so many political problems in the current age, but it's such a huge problem that this definitely isn't going to be the impetus…

This certainly won't solve the problem, but I would at least like to banish the term "side load", which is a kind of Orwellian word that takes something everyone used to do all the time and makes it sound obscure and a bit nefarious. Maybe we, the tech literate, can start calling sideloading a "free install" or something. When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%.

Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#419

Post by BrenBarn »

gmerc wrote: post #401
87636899376 wrote: post #14

Official announcement: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-... More info: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... Personally...we all know the Play Store is chock full of malicious garbage, so the verification requirements there don't do jack to protect users. The way I see it, this is nothing but a power grab, a way…

So KYC but C is “competition”.

And K is "kill".

Re: Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android

#420

Post by medhir »

earthicus wrote: post #415
throw10920 wrote: post #393

This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that. The problem is that most normal people (HN is not normal - mostly for the better) don't even understand what sideloading is - let alone actually care . How can we fix this? (aside from making people care - apathy enables so many political problems in the current age, but it's such a huge problem that this definitely isn't going to be the impetus…

This certainly won't solve the problem, but I would at least like to banish the term "side load", which is a kind of Orwellian word that takes something everyone used to do all the time and makes it sound obscure and a bit nefarious. Maybe we, the tech literate, can start calling sideloading a "free install" or something. When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%…

This is a great point. Not sure if it’s possible, would be great if there was some way to reclaim the notion of installing software as a general practice, regardless of whether a computer is “mobile” or “desktop”.

Like people still download software packages from the web on Windows, MacOS, and Linux… right? Maybe hard to grasp for the kids that grew up with tablets with no notion of a file system, idk

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