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Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

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Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#451

Post by SpaceNugget »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #399
itg wrote: post #2

Installing any app I want outside the Play Store was the primary reason I decided to go with Android, despite most of the people I know using iPhones. If I can't do this anymore, I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them.

"If I can't do this anymore..." How will Google force Android users to "update" so sideloadinng can be prevented Non-updated versions of Android running non-updated versions of sideloaded apps will not have the restriction Another example of how not every "update" is for "security" and "updates" should be optional The computer owner chooses one version of an operating system, e.g., "I chose Android because I can side…

Automatic updates are pretty unrelated. Google can just release an updated version of google play services or a device verification API and everyone's banking/government ID apps will stop working until you manually update anyway. They have a pretty big stick to whack you over the head with if you don't update to the new version "for security"

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#452

Post by realusername »

floxy wrote: post #191
realusername wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper for sure, better maybe but open source certainly not, AOSP doesn't run on a single device on earth, not even the emulators.

I'm out of the loop on this. What is Graphene doing? https://grapheneos.org/features >GrapheneOS is a private and secure mobile operating system with great functionality and usability. It starts from the strong baseline of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and takes great care to avoid increasing attack surface or hurting the strong security model.

They are doing it like everybody else, they have their own system apps (because they got kind of unmaintainted by Google in AOSP since Android 12), they add drivers from the pixel device tree and then they add their security patches.

If you would put AOSP on a Pixel, it wouldn't even boot and if you managed to get it to boot, the apps would be unusable.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#453

Post by gkbrk »

vbezhenar wrote: post #206
dangus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by much these days. The Pixel 10 actually gives you half the storage as the iPhone 17 at the same price. The only Android phones that are significantly cheaper than equivalent iPhone tend to come with some kind of compromise (and don’t forget that Apple’s phones start at $600 - the iPhone 16e exists).

Try Xiaomi.

Xiaomi phones have built-in ads, that's one of the reasons it gets to be cheaper.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#454

Post by zylstra »

jamesnorden wrote: post #169
itg wrote: post #2

Installing any app I want outside the Play Store was the primary reason I decided to go with Android, despite most of the people I know using iPhones. If I can't do this anymore, I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them.

>I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them I, too, love vendor lockin.

I have no idea why iMessage and FaceTime are draws when Signal is available.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#455

Post by spwa4 »

Palmik wrote: post #425
gizmo686 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking up Google will not help in this particular case. The problem is entirely within the Android unit; and would still be present even if Android were to be split off into it's own company. It certainly seems like there is problematic behavior in the restrictions Google puts on OEMs that want to use Android (or, more specifically, play services) on their devices. However, I think it would take a different enforce…

Disabling the ability to install arbitrary apps, like ReVanced, etc. benefits other parts of Alphabet. In general, making anti consumer decisions is also easier when you know you can fall back on income from other units.

Then why does Google make so few anti-consumer decisions? I mean, compare Google with Facebook. Surely we can agree Google is the better behaved of those two.

Apple only allows software on their macbooks and mac mini, and every release of MacOS it's more locked down. Everything else, from iPhone to the watch, is 100% locked down. Likewise, every version of Windows tries, again and again and again, to lock down programs that can be run. People absolutely don't accept it, but they do try (remember when they tried to bury the ability to run unverified apps behind a price hike?)

I'd at least give it a shot to simply appeal to Google on the justification they give. After all, the blogpost ... It is very strange for Google to do what they do in that blogpost, don't you think?

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...

"In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees ..."

"Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs praising it for providing a “balanced approach” that ..."

"Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sees it as a “positive and proactive measure” that aligns ..."

"Developer’s Alliance have called this a “critical step” for ..."

And it's easy to come up with other government requirements, like the DMA (yes, ironically) and ChatControl that require vendors are able to disable apps.

Clearly there is more than a little government pressure on Google to do this, including US and EU lobby groups (Developer's Alliance). Clearly Google is unwilling or unable to resist government pressure to allow governments to control which apps get to run ... Has anyone even asked these groups why they push for this?

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#456

Post by duskdozer »

preisschild wrote: post #145
JohnFen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> currently this is far from 'killing' non-appstore apps for most of the market. It means that Android is no longer suitable for my own private dev projects.

You can use GrapheneOS or LineageOS without the Google rootkit and continue installing any apps you want

sure. now. why do you think google won't choose a way to destroy them in the near future?

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#457

Post by IshKebab »

ronsor wrote: post #294
IshKebab wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... Does it support WhatsApp? If not that's a deal-breaker in most of the world.

Most of the world loves being shackled by a Meta product for some reason. The allegiance to WhatsApp is mindbending.

Because WhatsApp is really good, much better than SMS, and everybody uses it.

Meta only bought it after it was already the de facto standard. And to be fair they are only just starting to ruin it after quite a few years. So I would say the world made a pretty good decision there.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#458

Post by surajrmal »

casenmgreen wrote: post #51

This is the beginning of the end of Android. Google have over-reached. It is unacceptable to software developers to be unable to install software on their own phones, and this will lead to a successor to Android. It will take time, but it will now happen.

Very few people care about this change. The current outrage will be a distant memory in a few months. I'm sure fdroid will find a path forward. Folks who want to install custom apps on their phone will still be able to do so, maybe with an extra tedious step in some cases but if you're motivated the changes won't stop you.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#459

Post by surajrmal »

patcon wrote: post #412

I was a big proponent of the nexus phones and Google's efforts in the space, but I am hundred percent not an android fan anymore. There's a study on positive or destructive workers, from a business management pov. The finding was that the "bad" employees and the "good" are often the same people: a "good" employee scorned becomes the worst type of employee. I think Google will be discovering some variant of this from…

You seem to be framing this as if it were a business decision to curtail competition. I and likely the team pushing these changes only see the security benefits for users through these changes. People have tinted lenses to assume malice when Google does things, but if you've actually ever been close to the decision making process internally it's never anything close to what people seem to imagine. People are overestimating how problematic these changes will be in practice.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#460

Post by 1718627440 »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #432
goku12 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smaller company would at least be less capable of ignoring the fines or the loss of market share. Or in other words, "too big to fail".

"Too big to fail" usually refers to companies such as banks that are such integral parts of the financial infrastructure that governments must bail them out when they screw up. In Google's case I would rather call it "too big to care", because every fine they get is basically a rounding error.

They are also "too big to be regulated", which I would include in the "too big to fail" category.
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