Technology

I can’t see this move by Google as anything but a power grab to reduce competition

It locks down phones. Without sideloading the elite controls which messenger services can be used. They most likely can also secretly update apps and replace them with versions that leak the encryption keys.

With Google not being threatened by a competitor this essentially tells us that the elite is serious about moving to fascism.

It's frightening to me that the comment has 85 upvotes but no reply that points this out.

Just in time for them to be practically outlawed, if my gut can be trusted. I hope not.

It took 6-10 years for Android to take shape.

On Linux, every app has full access to your browsing history, clipboard (passwords), photos with geo-tags, music, list of other installed apps, contacts. Unrestricted battery and network access -- it's a tracking paradise. And all it takes is one supply chain attack on npm install with typical 4000K dependency packages

This is my #1 concern with this bullshit.

Hard agree. If I'm forces to only run barely used FOSS apps, then I might as well buy a linux phone.

I also use /e/OS. I'm not too versed in these things, but if I understand correctly from your comment, this decision by Google won't directly affect us right? Only in the sense that it discourages developers to not support FOSS apps?

For /e/os have adblocker? How’s the learning curve?

Someone needs to bring back Symbian OS

SailfishOS is heavily closed source and Jolla used to be linked to Russia with Rostelecom owning 60%+ of it.

Would these work outside of Europe, say in the U.S. or Canada?

My suspicion is that it's because the playstore has become so awful that google is seeing the effect in their earnings. If customers get burned one too many times on a crappy app with fake reviews, then they're not going to spend any money on anything else in the store anymore. So now Google tries to sabotage the possible alternatives, rather than try to fix their product.

How? The TOS for selling phones with Google services is that they can't sell phones with an Android fork outside China. Even the ODM is affected, meaning nobody will ever think this.

I saw in Italy that selling phones without Google services is a death sentence, Huawei crashed from 25% marketshare to 0% basically overnight even if they already had a "plan B" where they made "new" phones using the same specs and codename but in a different shape to buy time and when they launched their fork they had a 1:1 replacement for GMS called HMS so devs could still embed Google Maps and it will be replaced automatically by petal maps. Devs could upload their apps with a single click and users could install Google services unofficially installing an "unofficial 😉" APK with all the right signatures. Nobody did that. One click = too much work = nobody touches the default

At least they can leave the bootloader unlockable for us, but fucking Xiaomi really needs to make 200 new fucking models a year with lots of proprietary bits and abandons them after 6 months so it's impossibile for the community to make a well supported custom ROM. They copy everything from apple except the part where they should only make 4 fucking models a year. Basic, standard, pro and pro max. Don't need a "Xiaomi Redmi note 29T pro 5G wideband edition"

To be clear, GrapheneOS or any other fork of Android is not a long term viable solution as it is still dependent on Google. We need to break the Google/Apple duopoly. And of course, Linux phones are an option but people need top get behind it.

It's trying to squeeze through a legal loophole. They have to allow apps from outside their appstore. But law does not explicitly say they can't require them to be verified by google first.