This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I feel like I would have agreed with Google had they just argued "This is our private store. We did all the work to build it. We control the rules. If you want to make the Epic Store apk, you can. Sideloading is an absolute possibility. No hacking needed."
I would agree with that.
Instead they argued by Epic charging money without giving google a slice, it compromises users safety and the innovation of the platform.
Fuck
Off.
But apps outside of their store (such as fdroid) get constantly pinged for malware security scans, and android treats them as second class citizens in a lot of scenarios. It's really frustrating to fight your phone on so many fronts just to use the apps you want.
Apple iOS users outside of the EU are familiar with this too.
For the curious, sideloading apps requires you to run a server on your computer, and refresh the signature on the app at least once a month. Because iOS automatically kills any apps with out-of-date signatures, only automatically refreshes signatures on official App Store apps, and doesn’t allow any signatures longer than 30 days.
Don't you also need a developer license? So that's like an additional $8/month subscription to sideload on iOS.
Or I could be wrong 🤷
Users make abhorrent weird workarounds for that, like running a PC software that uses a free temporary developer license to re-license an app on your phone, that then uses that license to resign other apps ""automatically""
Not quite. You can use your free apple ID for temporary self-signing. But this cert is only valid for 7 days and can sign up to 3 apps simultaneously before you have to update the cert.
I have many, many apps installed through not-Play Store methods. Haven't really run into any issues with them. Yeah, Android gets a bit picky on initial install, but once you've gone through that process once, it becomes a no-brainer.
Haven’t really run into any issues with them
This has been changed if you're lucky enough to have a recent Android version, but not long ago any gallery app sideloaded from external sources couldn't be set as the system gallery, meaning managing pictures was really annoying because any changes required a pop up confirmation.
Pixel 9 Pro XL on Android 15.
That said, I haven't tried changing the photo gallery app yet.
Does this still happen? I use fdroid and it's not only more reliable than the play store, Ive never seen a malware warning or anything.
However, the 2023 trial overseen by US District Judge James Donato revealed a pattern of scheming on Google's part to prevent the distribution of alternative app stores on Android phones. While Android devices do allow sideloading of apps, and the platform is open source, Google's scale and partnerships with OEMs made it a de facto monopoly. This led the court to impose extensive remedies that could remake the mobile app ecosystem.
in the linked article on the 2023 trial:
At the time, Google was quick to point out that the ability to sideload apps on Android meant Epic hadn't been completely barred from distributing Fortnite on the platform (as it had been on iOS). "The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores," Google said in 2020. "While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play."
By April 2020, Epic had returned to the Google Play store, accusing Google of imposing a number of important limits on its sideloaded software. As the company said at the time:
Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third-party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
the open Android ecosystem
They got some nerve
Real, I actually had to turn off google play protect to install a third party app because of how sensitive it was.
Guys this is huge
ID/age verification for apps is being built so only google signed and integrity verified apps can run, that would prevent any age verified apps running on non-official android OS like graphene.
This will have to change when apps are coming from any random app store and can no longer use these google attestation services
From the article:
developers can opt out if they don't want their apps to be available more widely
So it won't affect that.
Will banks or Google itself not opt out?
Will Google not offer backroom incentives for companies to opt in to its monopoly scheme like it did before for other schemes?
They don't have to offer backroom incentives to the sort of organizations that want to use attestation. That would be a good future target for antitrust courts, as I'm pretty sure Google's primary motivation to add it was Amazon launching a phone in 2014 without Google services. Amazon didn't need Google's help to fail at that, but perhaps the next company to try was dissuaded.
As Apple recently discovered, willful noncompliance with the antitrust court is a bad plan. Google will probably be wary of backroom deals in the short term.
Fuck epic, but good for indie app developers who would otherwise have to hand over blood money to apple and Google
Yeah, Epic is shitty, but compared to Google they're good.
Hopefully both companies lose a load in legal fees and we get better stuff
If Google is sad, I'm happy
Yeah, Google became such a shitty company. Used to love them, now I'd like to see them fail.
They're still cool! They have lots of cool things they've released over the past few years! Like... Um...
Uh...
Well shit.
The shit was canceled.
So they didn't pay the bribes?
no doubt china will be making a similar judgement for Tencent etc.
on what? there's a gazillion chinese android app stores already, which makes chinese android phones need a ton more ram to compensate for all the update notification etc. services clogging up the backend
for banned US app stores like Steam and Google Play.
you can't order foreign entities to change especially if you've banned them already
Lol gimps
