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Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

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Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#501

Post by tw04 »

miki123211 wrote: post #470
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams. Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access). This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers. The heavy US skew of…

I can say that my parents have never once complained about a scam on their phone caused by sideloading.

In fact I don’t know anyone among any of my friends or family that have ever had that issue.

Every last one of my non-technical friends and family have been hit by spyware on their windows devices.

To say I’m extremely skeptical that this has anything to do with protecting users is an understatement.

In fact I’m willing to go out on a limb and say it’s a nearly non-existent issue outside of people being targeted by nation states.

Would love to see some numbers backing up the claim that sideloading is resulting in mass exploiting of Android devices because I can’t find them.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#502

Post by MiddleEndian »

miki123211 wrote: post #470
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams. Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access). This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers. The heavy US skew of…

If they actually cared about scams on Android, when I explicitly searched for in the Play Store, they wouldn't put at the top instead lol

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#503

Post by drnick1 »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #294
manuelabeledo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iOS YouTube app is not worse than the one in Android. Texting in iOS is arguably better or, at the very least, there is one more app to choose (Messages). And I’m curious to know what makes Antenna Pod so much better than the thousands of other podcast apps out there. Social media apps have historically been worse in Android, because of lax app and privacy controls. > What else is there, where is the advantage? P…

> Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone. I mean, one could say the exact same thing but swapping Google with Apple.

That's where GrapheneOS comes in. You can go fully Google-free or use their "sandboxed Google libraries" to run the Google apps as a normal user.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#504

Post by bigyabai »

tw04 wrote: post #501
miki123211 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams. Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access). This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers. The heavy US skew of…

I can say that my parents have never once complained about a scam on their phone caused by sideloading. In fact I don’t know anyone among any of my friends or family that have ever had that issue. Every last one of my non-technical friends and family have been hit by spyware on their windows devices. To say I’m extremely skeptical that this has anything to do with protecting users is an understatement. In fact I’m wi…

Yeah. My dad loves sideloaded Newpipe, and I haven't ever heard of him dealing with scams or viruses.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#506

Post by Aardwolf »

dismalaf wrote: post #386
Aardwolf wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those updates matter? Not for me at least usually (exception might be something like an rpg game expanding the world), apps nagging to get updated is annoying in fact.

Most online RPGs (Genshin for example) check for world updates everytime you log in, it's not tied to app updates.

I was thinking Andor's Trail :)

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#507

Post by palata »

jasode wrote: post #263
palata wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a pretty arbitrary list to me... Also Android has a bigger market share in the world than iOS, by a lot.

>Also Android has a bigger market share in the world than iOS, by a lot. The tone of that seems like you thought I was taking the discussion into fanboy evangelism and therefore Android needed to be defended. That wasn't the intent and I already tried to downplay my comment by stating the iOS ecosystem specifics do not matter to 99% of mainstream users. Yes, everybody on HN already knows Android has a much bigger mar…

Wow I don't get all the downvotes I'm getting for that.

You answered to:

>> I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore.

With a list of apps, some of which only listed because they got Android support a few months later. And some of which I have never heard of (SmartSDR?).

I get why those apps matter to you, but it feels a bit arbitrary. While the quote refers to something that was more general (which suggests that "at a point, iOS had a lot more quality apps"). I am just saying that the answer "no but I checked the app I like on iOS and a handful of them don't exist on Android" was kind of one anecdotal data point in the discussion.

And my point about Android having a bigger market share was that my intuition is that probably popular apps end up on Android eventually, or alternatives exist.

I honestly really don't care if people prefer iOS, Android, GrapheneOS, or a Linux for mobile distro.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#508

Post by j45 »

miki123211 wrote: post #470
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams. Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access). This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers. The heavy US skew of…

That's a bit of a surprising postulation.

If there's a reputation, that means it's reasonably widespread. 5% doesn't seem like much.

Does this mean there are so many advanced users sideloading apps to compromise them?

Except users aren't so advanced that they are getting scammed because of side loading?

Or might it be the cascading delays in security updates that don't seem to reach devices between Google, manufacturers, and telcos? This is a much more massive (the 95%) of security hole and backdoors for scams to enter.

These arguments don't really seem to fit together or make sense.

Happy to get some links to read more about all of the statements.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#509

Post by palata »

Saris wrote: post #410
fc417fc802 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're running Graphene or a similar security minded distro the sandboxing isn't very good. Okay let's be honest it's fairly abysmal at preventing fingerprinting. It could almost be accused of not even bothering to try. But one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518866

Even with graphene I don't believe it mitigates much as far as apps collecting data. The idea for more privacy is you run open source apps instead that just don't collect data. AFAIK Graphene is oriented towards strong device security with privacy as more of a side effect.

One thing with the sandboxed Play Services being that Google has fewer permissions on the device, so presumably they can collect less data.

Which I believe is GrapheneOS' argument when people praise microG: microG being open source does not fundamentally add privacy: apps using microG will phone to Google's servers (that's the whole point of microG). What microG solves is that it removes the Play Services that are root on your device, and it turns out that sandboxed Play Services do that as well.

> The idea for more privacy is you run open source apps instead that just don't collect data.

Yep exactly, I just wanted to add about the sandboxed Play Services, because it was not obvious to me at first :)

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#510

Post by ben_w »

akerl_ wrote: post #337
ben_w wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you? The fact this happens on my versions of both MacOS and iOS means they didn't have automated tests covering this from day one. Famously, "it works for me" is not how high quality software happens.

It seems basically impossible that math works differently on your calculator app than somebody else’s. Can you post a recording of what you’re seeing?

https://vimeo.com/1158174682?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
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