Let Google know what you think about their proposed restrictions on sideloading Android apps. - Android developer verification requirements
Android developer verification requirements
Source of feedback form:
https://developer.android.com/developer-verification (bottom of page)
Some poignant questions for these new platform requirements:
What a disappointing week. I was looking to replace my five year old iPhone with an android phone and now I'm just stumped. Pixel 10 looked pretty good but then this sudden verification requirement news hit. Both platform are now equally crap. The hell with both of these shitty companies. Maybe I'll go full retro and get a dumb phone instead.
Get a pixel secondhand and put an android fork on it. Its what I will likely do because I am sick of Google in my life and dont want to pay through the nose for a glossy shit that doesnt even have a file manager from apple.
I am really hoping that PostmarketOS will become more viable.
I've been trying to get rid of all American service provider (dropped netflix, duolingo); smartphones are more difficult though because they need to work.
What has happened with mobile platforms has proven that the fact that we ended up with PC platforms that allow us the freedom to largely do whatever we want with them was more an outlier than the norm.
Apple and Google have gone out of their way at every step with their new platforms over the last 20 years to make sure that process does not repeat itself. Even the stuff that seems more open like Android technically supporting arbitrary app installs from anywhere and the Linux container in ChromeOS still allows the platform holder to step in and stop you from doing something with those tools should they desire using mechanisms that the OS depends on to be useful.
You will own nothing, and be angry. But you can't do diddly squat about it. Now open wide and BOHICA.
I did my part!
Is that an official Google form and/or who am I providing my (required) email address to?
Is there an official Google page that links to this? Sorry but anyone can share a Google form.
Yes, there is.
Here's the official Android Developer page on the developer verification program. Bottom of the page, green square on the right labeled "Do you have any additional questions or feedback?"
Link is the same as in the post.
You need to verify yourself before you submit. They testing.
Na. Used throwaway email tied to nothing. Selected the options that applied to me. Left them a cordial "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" feedback letter in the message box and submitted. No verification needed. The only chance for defense is giving them a number they can measure of people who will switch devices if they continue to pursue dev verification.
It doesn't matter. I made up the Emil address and it went through
This is silly. Google doesn't give a single fuck. This decision will make money for key players and that's the end of the conversation.
I dunno, I'm sure there's a part of them that doesn't want to scare off all the free labor they get from the community developers. They are probably legitimately trying to gauge how much of an impact on that this will have. That doesn't mean they are going to stop or change anything, but they probably genuinely care enough to know.
This is the exact same argument the Hackintosh community had. "Apple will never put a stop to us, we're the hardcore tinkerers who find bugs in their software before any normal user!"
Google doesn't care. The hardcore users on the bleeding edge make up 0.001% of people with an Android phone. Pissing them off will not affect the shareholders.
I dunno, I’m sure there’s a part of them that doesn’t want to scare off all the free labor they get from the community developers.
Google’s thinking has gone short term “next quarter must go up.” They would absolutely trash their Android dev community for a quick buck, 100%.
It's very likely that no amount of negative feedback will change anything. Why not waste some of their time anyway? Write to them, call them, spread the word. This is the only thing we can do. Even if it goes through regardless - at the very least we can make it as unpleasant as possible.
Doesnt matter.
Give feedback and pray it somehow does something!
You do it for posterity reasons
Public pushback on stuff like this does work on occasion. It even worked on Apple when they proposed upload filters for CSAM.
Google's intent in the short term probably is just about malware, but in the long term it gives them, and governments which can pressure them the ability to ban any app from nearly all Android devices. Once deployed, there's a near 100% chance of such a mechanism being used for evil.
The malware argument falls like a house of cards when you just dig a bit nd see that Play Store is full of indiscutible malware like flashlight "apps".
I don't buy the malware arguement. Most major social apps function like malware (tracking location and anything they can). In the 90s, any app that did that (say to your laptop) would be treated as spyware.
No doubt many "legitimate" apps, including some of Google's own are spyware. This claims to be about the sort of malware that steals your bank account login.
I'd even speculate that most of the people involved are working in good faith; they think they're the good guys and they can be trusted with that kind of power. Nobody should have that kind of power though because it always leads to corruption.
It's only spyware if Google can't monetize it. Which is ironic if you think about it.
Also the true malware is currently signed and it still reaches millions of people, most of the time downloaded straight from store.
I would argue that was the definition even in the early 2000s. then it became a business model for famous companies.
Google aren't opposed to evil any more though, they removed their motto of "Don't Be Evil".
Alphabet Agency company was never opposed to evil. They're like the "nice” drug dealer giving you what you like until you keep coming back. Or the guy in the van giving out free candy.
I thought their intent was to (attempt to) reduce piracy
Their intent is to reduce people running software they didn't purchase through their commissioned store.
Apple is a bit more receptive to bad PR, but Google has a history of kinda ignoring developer feedback, like with the JPEG XL thing as a narrow example.
This is an especially technical matter to; it’s no threat to them.
Closing the side loading option is a path to antitrust suits, a slap in the face to privacy, a kick in the teeth to independent devs and personal use.
There is zero reason for this other than wanting full control of how I use my own phone and how much money/data google can squeeze out of everyone.
I did not purchase a phone to have it later be functionally broken as features it had have been stripped in the name of 'security'.
A warning message is all that is needed. The current toggle is enough.
We are not toddlers.
There are not possibly enough cases that it warrants such a restrictive policy aside from the stated reasons above.
Give me liberty or give me symbian.
How's that?
Give me liberty or give me
symbianmaemo
FTFY
Symbian had package signature fuckery :/
Another reason why it worka in place of the word death in that phrase.
My only real experience with symbian was waaaaay back when I did tech support for l Sony Ericsson, and while I was more into modding the phones (remember those days?) and playing worms on a 1.5" screen on the walkman line of phones, I did have the p900 and the p1i.
And let me tell you, OS aside, the P1i was indestructible.
One exceptionally intoxicated weekend, the gf and I got into a bit of a tiff.
She grabbed the phone and threw it out the door or the apartment, onto that polished rock type floor.
It impacted as one would expect.
Shattered into a hundred pieces.
But... The screen was the old capacitive touch type, so it was a layer of plastic with a layer of plastic with a layer of plastic with ultra thin wires with a layer of plastic with a layer of glass with a layer of plastic with a layer of metal backing, and the rest of the internals were modular with push in/flip down cable clips that easily separated. The entire body was plastic.
I laughed.
(I'd taken it apart before because mods)
I picked up the parts, put them together as I walked out and turned it back on.
Anyway, symbian.
Oh, the memories.
Sounds like the thing that will finally get me onto another platform. Sideloading is the only way around most of these companys' draconian restrictions.
There aren't really many choices when it comes to mobile OS.
Not a lot currently, but what's needed is for the snowball to start rolling. This means the early adopters will have to make the more difficult decision of choosing "lesser" options wrt. comfort and convenience, compatibility, and bang for your buck. All decisions matter, and it will have long-term effects en masse.
Back to a Java flip phone then. Or just off portable radio based computing as a whole. We don't need portable telephony, and we certainly don't need to carry portable supercomputers.
True.
Linux on Mobile has a poor ecosystem and only works on older phones (older then most Android roms)
What platform you going to go to? iPhones?
This is just a way to capture negative feedback in a way that leaves you feeling like you did something while impacting none of their business which they can then ignore and throw away with no issues. Make noise on social media, not feedback forms. Make them hurt.
I couldn't tell from the article, but does this impact ALL apps that do NOT go through the Google Play Store?
What about 3rd party App Stores? Amazon has one, there is also the FOSS app stores like F-Droid. Are those in or out?
F-Droid would likely be out because they rebuild many apps from source.
I have a feeling that this is a retaliation for those as Epic is leading a charge against Google Play, and rightly so, not that they are an ally. I just like watching pigs fight.
https://techbriefly.com/2025/08/01/epic-games-store-coming-to-google-play-after-court-win/
as long as your phone have GMS preinstalled and listed under Google certification. this will affect you. So, Chinese phone without GMS is fine.
if this policy is implemented. the easiest thing for noobs will be get a Chinese phone without certification from Google https://storage.googleapis.com/play_public/supported_devices.html like huawei (you can get a GMS support with emulator like Gbox)
The problem I see is that the independent app market will not survive this if the audience of "normal" Android devices is gone. Most devs won't bother developing apps that are not available on the play store, so alternative roms are not a solution in most markets.
They will for the Chinese market, whatever that’s worth.
Here is the direct link to the form
Straight into the garbage.
I did it and I told them exactly why and what I use and why and hopefully they will take heed. It's not even some freakishly avoid-y reason or anything. I'm not extremist because I know that if I'm going to use a lot of this stuff I have to make compromises because it's not magically going to get better overnight, but also we have to stand up for user freedom so we have some degree of ability to actually use our devices as we wish and install software that we want on our own computer.
Were you able to sign up and give feedback without verifying your identity first?
Its our chance to over turn this.
Let's hope this won't happen.
Come on, they don't care. I will use a custom mod for as long as possible and when this stops working I will switch to two phones setup: de-googled daily driver and second phone for work/car apps. And if I will have to choose between stock Android and iPhone for the second phone I will go with an iPhone.
It's so lovely and cute to think that feedback will result in something, it definitely does, just look around us nowadays and we can see the brave Unicode characters hanging around as things have been improving on a daily basis! 🥰
Surely all feedback will be read by lovely humans, not by their clanker, because we all know how we always talk with flesh-and-bone humans, not clankers, whenever we reach some kind of "Help center" or "Contact us".
With enough Unicode characters, the increasingly-dystopian tech world will definitely stop being dystopian! Onward, QWERTY keyboards!
/s
If they get one angry message they'll ignore it. If they get 10,000 angry messages they might start worrying about what the people who haven't sent messages will do if they proceed.
Public outcry doesn't always work, but it has worked enough times to try again. It takes minimal effort for a significant potential gain.
It’s Google and Android, the biggest OS on the planet - they would need tens of millions of unique people with actual well written concerns before they even considered reconsidering.
Clanker: “Sentiment Analysis Complete: they don’t like it. They think it’s a scheme to consolidate power and market control. Beep boop.”
It really short circuits the power of mass feedback when it gets summarized by a bot. No nuance, no ingenious argumentation, nothing. None of that gets in front of the eyes of those managing the feedback.
And that’s because it’s inefficient to read everything.
Yeah, exactly!
Also, it's highly dependent on the "prompt", similarly to how HR companies are filtering resumes through prompts specifically written to ignore "undesirable resumes". People who believe any sort of feedback will "let (name of a corporation) know what you think about (some enshittification event/feature)" aren't just naive, but blatantly unaware of how enshittification got "meta" (pun intended) as in "enshittify all means of reversing any enshittification", and this includes "user feedback".
People try to argue how some past collective user feedback "did take effect", pointing to things such as Apple's real-time scanning of messages. They think Apple gave up of that, and they think this was due to strongly-worded collective feedback, as if corporations ever bothered themselves to carefully consider every user feedback and serve the wishes of their users, not their shareholders. I find this wishful thinking very cute and naive. In reality, corporations don't give a nought about user feedback because they know people will be compelled to use their products.
For example: need banking to pay rent and groceries? Soon you'll need their apps which will only work in Android or iOS, as offline banking and offline methods of payments is increasingly scarcer due to global digitalization of financial systems. As a Brazilian, I've been watching as Brazil already got "Pix" (a digital instant payment system) everywhere and fiat currency is increasingly difficult to withdraw from ATMs as more and more physical banks close their doors, other countries already have their own Pix-like systems of digital payment, and it's just a matter of time before EU, USA, Australia and other "first-world countries" got (and enforce) their own as well.
tl;dr: The enshittification is broader than we think, and strongly-worded Unicode texts won't change the course of global technofeudalism.
Apple requires some developer credentials and notarization for sideloading apps, to prevent known malware. What is the problem with this?
Edit: everyone this is an honest question.
People use Android to not have such restrictions.
Something like F-Droid (which published its own builds from source) would likely not be possible with such a model.
It's certainly one of the main reasons I moved.
First, we don't have this in Android and we're better off.
It's another flavour of gatekeeping.
Second, why do we want to copy apple?
Apple method is terrible too and had to be forced by the EU to allow sideloading so tried to make it as restrictive as possible within the rules. And don't think they bothered to support it outside the EU. So Apple is not the one to use as a defense of restrictions to installation of software om Android.
And I fear malware more from Google Play than F-droid with how they just allow anything and millions of installs give people a false sense of security until it's later revealed it was a malware app. So no I don't buy this security bullshit.
It's about control and data harvesting.
to prevent known malware
Nope
Do you think Google won't revoke the signature for apps like revanced or newpipe or send a c&d to the now doxxed devs?
Main reason apple did that is to limit piracy, nsfw apps and track how many installs so they can still bill the developer for that
"North Korea does [X], what's the problem with [USA/UK/EU] doing [X]?"
Just today apple showed how stupid is this policy as they revoked the publisher certificate for a torrent app, proving that the end goal is not locking malware but stuff that they don't like