F-Droid calls for regulators to stop Google’s crackdown on sideloading
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binaryseeker
Smack-Fu Master, in training
This whole plan by Google is such a spit in the face AND insanely dumb. If there's no sideloading, what reason would anyone even have to use an Android device? It's precisely that freedom that even justifies using Android. Sideloading makes it worth it to forgo Apple's tightly knitted ecosystem, to accept the fragementation and inconsistencies in OEM's Android distributions, to give up the ease and features that one could have with an iPhone to communicate with iPhone-having friends and family. Without that freedom, why in the world would anyone buy an Android phone? As an Android user, it just doesn't make one shred of sense to me.
Good luck to the F-Droid team, but I have no faith in the current climate that we will see literally any consumer-friendly regulation coming anytime soon.
Good luck to the F-Droid team, but I have no faith in the current climate that we will see literally any consumer-friendly regulation coming anytime soon.
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Hiring the fox to protect the henhouse always works so well. For the fox anyway.
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I don't use F-Droid, but I do use AdGuard and ReVanced, both of which are in the category of apps Google wants to kill the most (ad blockers).
If I can't use these on iOS, and I soon won't be able to use them on Android, that doesn't leave many options. But I guess I'll have to start exploring them, because I will not use a modern phone without a way to block ads.
If I can't use these on iOS, and I soon won't be able to use them on Android, that doesn't leave many options. But I guess I'll have to start exploring them, because I will not use a modern phone without a way to block ads.
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It's fascinating since this puts them in the same place that Apple is in right now. Where tight control of app distribution is becoming a selling point, right as the courts are starting to say "No, you don't get to do that" I'm not entirely sure what this means for Android's future since the flexibility has always been a huge selling point
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Perhaps Google is hoping to rebrand Android as the "AI phone OS" instead of the "open phone OS". I imagine they're tired of being seen as the budget player in the market.
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I use F-Droid to run Forkyz, which is a fork of Shortyz, which is a crossword app that the original developer abandoned.
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Firefox on Android supports extensions, so you could use it for browsing with uBlock Origin and AdGuard's filter lists enabled. Won't really help much for YouTube, though.
I'm sure that if Google gets away with this they'll be looking for a way to force Firefox to stop supporting extensions on Android, or completely ban blocking ads within all Android apps.
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Maybe it's time for the EU to follow China's approach and roll their own system. It would probably take 3-5 years with some usable versions in the interim, but the budget would be modest and smartphone hardware technology is nearly a commodity. If it's done right, the EU could even build its own smartphone ecosystem, and why not?
P.S. Doctorow over at Pluralistic just made a similar point. There's a lot of untapped software talent out there, but those guys have day jobs. Maybe there are some problems one can solve by throwing money at them, e.g. not getting evicted by your landlord.
P.S. Doctorow over at Pluralistic just made a similar point. There's a lot of untapped software talent out there, but those guys have day jobs. Maybe there are some problems one can solve by throwing money at them, e.g. not getting evicted by your landlord.
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Important to note, as stated in the original ArsTechnica article, that none of this applies if you aren't running Google Play Services on your phone. So custom ROM users can continue to do as they please. I've got to believe most F-Droid users would consider Google Play Services to be malware anyway. I know I did when I was an F-Droider 
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I'd still use Android. I hate iOS' general UI/UX, and find Android to just feel more advanced. From the days where I could embed a calendar widget on my home screen, iOS always felt like it was playing catch-up.
All that said, I'm still very much against them making it harder to sideload or replace parts of their OS. I do use an alternate launcher (Nova) and I'm sure they'd love to lock them out as well.
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Total number of smartphones in the world is estimated at 7.21 billion (and 4.88 billion users). Android is estimated to have 74% market share, compared to iOS's 26%. That's 5.33 billion phones. I doubt any significant proportion of those Android users chose Android for its sideloading capability.
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I recently bought a drone from DJI. However, the DJI Fly app was removed from the Play store. Therefore I had to sideload the official app which is easily available from their website.
Would this be a way for Google to shutdown developers it doesn't like?
Would this be a way for Google to shutdown developers it doesn't like?
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This is another money-grab. Google's new monopoly status forces them to allow distributions outside of the Google Play store. Solution: just charge a developer a registration fee in order to allow your app to get installed regardless of source. Oh, and now you have their personal information to harass them to join the Play store proper. Saying this is about security is similar to government surveillance laws being only about child porn.
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Half of the apps on my Google Pixel.smartphone were sideloaded. If I lose that ability, it will be back to dumb flip phones for me because I absolutely refuse to use the Internet without an ad blocker. If that means no Internet at all, so be it.
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We basically need an entirely new open-source hardware and software paradigm. Phones are now too fundamental to have it all in the hands of a sociopathic advertising agency that designs complete garbage software. Everything's optimized for their own advertising interests. Enough.
Entirely open-source and modular hardware and software that you can modify, upgrade, assemble. It won't be easy but entirely doable with enough interested engineers and international cooperation. It's not actually that difficult - one person could actually do it with enough time, hypothetically: it would be super limited and low-performance. That's where the entire hypothetical OpenPhone group comes in.
Both apple and google need to be destroyed; they don't operate for any greater good.
Entirely open-source and modular hardware and software that you can modify, upgrade, assemble. It won't be easy but entirely doable with enough interested engineers and international cooperation. It's not actually that difficult - one person could actually do it with enough time, hypothetically: it would be super limited and low-performance. That's where the entire hypothetical OpenPhone group comes in.
Both apple and google need to be destroyed; they don't operate for any greater good.
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If you can load a custom ROM. AFAIK (I haven't checked in a couple weeks), AOSP still hasn't received the last batch of updates, and GrapheneOS can't commit to when they'll be able to load on the Pixel 10.Important to note, as stated in the original ArsTechnica article, that none of this applies if you aren't running Google Play Services on your phone. So custom ROM users can continue to do as they please. I've got to believe most F-Droid users would consider Google Play Services to be malware anyway. I know I did when I was an F-Droider
There could be a full-out fork, but that leads to a host of other issues. Probably the main one being a chicken-and-egg problem: most people don't care enough to venture into another software ecosystem, which means it's not worth most devs writing for it, and without devs writing software people won't bother moving over.
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Sucks! I use it for a few apps that I have installed on my phone. I hope that wont' be case. Guess Android is becoming less and less open. This along with source code getting release late, and most of the development that goes on behind closed doors.
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I know a number of people who use Android devices, and none have any interest in (or likely any awareness of the existence of) sideloading. Most people on Ars are technically sophisticated - they would be considered “power users” - and know of sideloading, with its benefits and downsides. Most phone users aren’t. They might get Android phones because they don’t like Apple (or more specifically, aspects of the iOS UI) or because they want some feature the iPhone doesn’t offer (like folding), but mostly because iPhones are expensive, and there is a large range of (often no name) Android phones that are cheaper. The cost of the phone is a huge issue for many consumers, both in the US and especially in lower disposable income countries. Don’t assume that the issue that is seemingly most important to you - the freedom to install non-Google approved software - is critically important to most users.
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Read the room, fellas. This isn't the Private Equity Water Cooler chatroom you've found yourselves in.
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The cynic in me thinks Google will get favorable rulings from governments for doing this. This way the governments can outlaw end to end encryption apps and google can actually keep them from running on their system easily for the average (and above average) user.
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Pop quiz time!
What's the difference between my desktop computer connected to the internet and my mobile phone connected to the internet?
(Hint: it's not what you said; both are connected or "integrated" with millions or billions of other devices and systems around the world).
What if I put my phone in airplane mode or don't have it set to receive cellular service/e.g. no SIM card? In your eyes should I be able to do whatever I want with it, then?
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Woah, woah, woah, I thought this was going to be just for new phones coming out, but you're saying these restrictions are coming to our existing phones?
Eff that noise. In that case, I want a refund for my year-old Samsung S24.
Eff that noise. In that case, I want a refund for my year-old Samsung S24.
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THIS looks like the reason for Amazon to move away from Android for its devices.
Indeed they needs the sideload feature more than anyone else for their fire devices.
Indeed they needs the sideload feature more than anyone else for their fire devices.
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We recently had to verify our organizational identity to maintain availability (in Play) of our free critical thinking skills-building game "Cranky Uncle."
The procedural work for this was farmed out to Dunn & Bradstreet, required getting a DUNS number and most significantly was a huge hassle, the private sector equivalent of a mini IRS audit.
Let alone philosophical implications, this move is going to waste millions of hours of collective time-- or not, because who's going to volunteer as a time-available chump in this scenario?
The procedural work for this was farmed out to Dunn & Bradstreet, required getting a DUNS number and most significantly was a huge hassle, the private sector equivalent of a mini IRS audit.
Let alone philosophical implications, this move is going to waste millions of hours of collective time-- or not, because who's going to volunteer as a time-available chump in this scenario?
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More like in the name of exclusivity, profits and greed.
Seriously, security has always been on the user, and companies have largely favored the invasiveness of their own apps to the exclusion of everyone else.
Who the fuck doesn't see that?
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This is me. I don't side load... Currently, but I did a long time ago, and frankly one of the reasons android has the customizability and lack of parentalism that iphone has is because Google knows we can just sideload, so might as well make the app store permissive and capture some dollars.
Not looking forward to Mastercard getting petitioned to control for no adult themes in the app store like they just did steam and itch.io
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"FOSS" was embraced by Google as a way to launch Android and help it grow to reach market dominance. It provided a good ecosystem for the platform early on.
However that no longer became worth stewarding once it started to have a downside.
They don't want other payment processors on their platform. They want to label things like Fortnite as viruses so they can force devs & consumers to use their payment processor and claim rent for their platform.
Losing the Epic Lawsuit portions when Apple won was a signal that it was time for the 'Open Ecosystem' to end and it is a tragedy. I love F-Droid and all the little apps that solve problems way better than the for-profit enshittified ones all over the app store.
However that no longer became worth stewarding once it started to have a downside.
They don't want other payment processors on their platform. They want to label things like Fortnite as viruses so they can force devs & consumers to use their payment processor and claim rent for their platform.
Losing the Epic Lawsuit portions when Apple won was a signal that it was time for the 'Open Ecosystem' to end and it is a tragedy. I love F-Droid and all the little apps that solve problems way better than the for-profit enshittified ones all over the app store.
This is absolutely what is going on.
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I'm exactly here. Google can go f*ck themselves. I'd rather go back to a dumb phone then capitulate to their crap.
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This is fine in the app store. I could see a "Are you really sure this is a good idea?" screen.
Making it a fundamental "for security", when they're making permissions more and more opaque and harder to fine-tune? Nah.
I think this is frog-boiling for iOS levels of locked-down, but without the privacy.
Making it a fundamental "for security", when they're making permissions more and more opaque and harder to fine-tune? Nah.
I think this is frog-boiling for iOS levels of locked-down, but without the privacy.
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Calling installing an app "sideloading" is no different than calling "terrorism" a holy war. Please stop this corruption of meaning. Installing an app is installing an app. It's insane how many people now think "sideloading" is akin to a criminal activity.
/endRant
Edit: I am disabled and created an accessibility app to help 12 years ago, it has been nothing but frustration trying to adhere to google's bureaucracy and tendency to break basic functionality each release. And it's so much fun to make it through Google's inconsistent and contradictory documentation.... which will be broken on a further release for dubious reasons anyways.
I wish there was another option but I have yet to find it.
/endRant
Edit: I am disabled and created an accessibility app to help 12 years ago, it has been nothing but frustration trying to adhere to google's bureaucracy and tendency to break basic functionality each release. And it's so much fun to make it through Google's inconsistent and contradictory documentation.... which will be broken on a further release for dubious reasons anyways.
I wish there was another option but I have yet to find it.
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