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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

#461

Post by kylebenzle »

bb88 wrote: post #448
rvnx wrote: post #406

If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked. What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)

I've often lamented at work that we lose freedom at the guise of "security". Security and Intellectual Property (IP) protection could both be true. Google has a big enough reason to make it happen now. In a perverse way it's not that protecting Google's IP is making us safer. Yet it, strangely is.

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

#462

Post by kylebenzle »

medhir wrote: post #407

Every day we stray farther from the premise that we should be allowed to install / modify software on the computers we own. Will once again re-up the concept of a “right to root access”, to prevent big corps from pulling this bs over and over again: https://medhir.com/blog/right-to-root-access

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

#463

Post by jbhifilover »

eadmund wrote: post #357

This is completely, absolutely and totally unacceptable. My phone is my phone, not Google’s. They have absolutely no right to prevent me from running whatever software I wish on that phone. This must not be allowed to stand.

You paid for the phone with the OS as a contributing factor (alongside the hardware) to the purchase no doubt, so the OS in itself must be compelling to you for some reason.

You didn't fund the development of the OS, contribute to it (presumably), you didn't market it or position it alongside your brand.

I'd agree with you if you said you have a right to run anything on the hardware under a different OS, but you have no god given right to run whatever you want on the OS.

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

#464

Post by paradite »

rvnx wrote: post #406

If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked. What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)

It won't work because of too many false positives. People are already trained to ignore warnings, like how they blindly accept T&C without reading.

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

#465

Post by pmontra »

safety1st wrote: post #454
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…

I agree that this is a horrible step in the wrong direction but in terms of the solution I have a different take. I don't think that making "normal" people "care" about sideloading is the answer, because a) it's impossible and b) political change doesn't happen through "normal" people anyway, all political and regulatory change is driven via smaller and motivated groups of people. The problem is fundamentally that th…

I can do banking and otp at home with a 100 Euro phone that I use only for that. FB, TikTok, Instagram, etc, neve ever installed them on my devices.

The problem is that I want to make calls, SMSes, use WhatsApp and Telegram, Maps and OSMAnd, NewPipe, VLC, Syncthing and a few others on the phone I carry with me.

And to make matters worse I don't want a huge, thick and heavy brick like every Linux phone I read about. I'm on a Samsung A40 now and it's not easy to find a replacement with similar size and weight.

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

#467

Post by godelski »

rvnx wrote: post #406

If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked. What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)

  > What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced
I think it is also very telling where they're rolling out first. Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore.

It felt weird that the official press release was quoting entities from these countries, as if it should give confidence to the rest of the world. I can't imagine what these countries would want with apps that can be traced back to a government id...

Vanced and such is more of a First World/Western issue. I don't think you're wrong but I got a strong gut feeling there's other pressures in the works. Just something doesn't smell right...

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

#468

Post by jeroenhd »

nabogh wrote: post #395
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…

We need another os in the market. A duopoly just isn't competitive enough. Too bad the cost of entry is so high.

Sailfish tried and failed. Various Linux distro also tried and failed even harder. Consumers at large just aren't interested in anything other than iOS and Android.

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

#470

Post by godelski »

paradite wrote: post #464
rvnx wrote: post #406

If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked. What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)

It won't work because of too many false positives. People are already trained to ignore warnings, like how they blindly accept T&C without reading.

This is something laughable that Apple does. Anytime you install something from Github it'll make you click a few extra boxes. And their tightening down of things also ends up making people look for third party software in the first place. All this really does is, like you said, teach people to ignore warnings.
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