Google confirms Android dev verification will have free and paid tiers, no public list of devs

Google promises verification will make Android safer, but at what cost?

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[Cloudgazer]

It doesn’t sound any different from what Apple is currently doing in the EU, and that seems to have gotten some measure of grudging acceptance. Though the EU has been known to “creatively interpret” the DMA when it suits them, so who knows.

Apple also still retains the ability to decide which apps to approve or block in the EU, even for third party app stores. If push comes to shove, I suspect the EU government will be making similar “requests” of Apple as well.

The EU has had plenty of time to complain about Apple's app notarization, and they have complained about plenty of other things, so at this point we can conclude that they accept it as an appropriate security measure. Something explicitly permitted in the DMA with no creative interpretation necessary.

The EU really doesn't want a sudden rise in malware making the DMA look bad to their own citizens. Giving either Apple or Google a further excuse to blame them for such an outcome (which lets be honest is a very likely outcome) would be political suicide.

 

[Cloudgazer]

Primary function that EU loves about this is censorship and control over what apps are available. With this they can easily block all apps that have actual security (see chat control proposal among others).
Population here has been voting wrong lately so EU has been busy making sure that we peasants can't do that anymore.

Steady - you're starting to sound British!

 

[Cloudgazer]

The issue, of course, is that Apple argued that all of those steps are somehow required to keep iOS’ security intact (despite Apple silicon Macs in Full Security Mode offering effectively the same security guarantees while still allowing arbitrary third-party apps and even custom OSes and OS downgrades, but nobody ever brings that up)

What do you mean? People are always bringing that up - apparently wilfully unaware of that fact that home computers are began from a starting point of utter insecurity and have slowly had security applied over the years.

Given the wild-west starting point of the home computer there is a lot more that is permissible on a Mac than is or should be on an iPhone. Because the iPhone didn't start out insecure by design.

So we ultimately end up just blocking stuff that black hats aren’t using for exploitation, while also blocking stuff that legitimate developers actually are using, and always in a way that somehow conveniently financially benefits the big corporation in charge of all of this. It’s exactly the same way with apps now: there are already effective exploits for hacking iOS devices through mechanisms like iMessage. The existence or non-existence of third-party apps doesn’t meaningfully change how protected people are from bad actors because the protection is all based on OS and API design anyway.

This argument is akin to saying that because it is possible to break a window there is no point locking the door.