I'm just surprised how the responses here(including the original announcement post) at HN of all places are mild and at times indifferent to the fact that we are about to give up control of our devices and make Google the arbitrator of what we can run on them. That ship may have sailed for ios but it hasn't for android yet.
This is the time to ask what we can do about this, how do we stop it. How do we raise awareness among people, among law makers or people whose opinions matter to make Google take notice.
I'm all for alternatives like linux phones but it's not realistic in the timeframe. It will be a sad day if this comes to pass without least bit of resistance.
If you sell your new platform as "open" to gain market share and then break that promise of openness after you successfully drive competing platforms out of the market, that sounds a lot like fraudulent marketing to me.
The mild response shouldn't surprise you. I think the majority of American consumers and developers use iOS and they have little to no problem with the highly controlled and monopolized system.
Apple controls ridiculous detail of your application and there are many developers who think that it is necessary for Apple to keep the high quality of iOS.
Actually I was shocked when one of my coworkers told me that it is a very good idea and Google should have done it sooner.
> I think the majority of American consumers and developers use iOS and they have little to no problem with the highly controlled and monopolized system.
Those users knew in advance what they were buying into, since Apple was honest about the nature of the platform they were offering for sale.
Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to -- and it's solely Google's fault that Google lied about Android being both open to running any software you like and open source.
Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.
>This is the time to ask what we can do about this, how do we stop it. How do we raise awareness among people, among law makers or people whose opinions matter to make Google take notice.
You and me don't get a vote on the Google board. The current government is not what I'd call fiercely pro-consumer. People say that money talks, but what's really in this season is tacky golden bribes; not an area where consumer advocates have a comparative advantage.
Raising awareness for a change that Google is already communicating widely and openly, is unlikely to scare Google very much.
If you want to take this seriously, it's going to need something beyond the usual token resistance that consists of angry social media posts.
Outside of regulation, or a large portion of users switching to better, freer alternatives, I think the question is quickly going to become: how can we get around this and other identity verification nonsense?
The solution here is to reject Google devices and switch to AOSP-derived distributions like Graphene and Lineage that patch out such arbitrary restrictions. You can buy a Pixel (ironically), flash GrapheneOS, and enjoy a phone that runs most Android apps without giving Google any of your data.
They're slowly tightening the screws on alternative Android builds as well. Most recently they removed distribution of factory builds for Pixels, which are used for figuring out drivers and such.
Until the government labels the use of Graphene as suspicious behavior, dragnets all alternative OS supporters, and wiretaps communications solely based on the fact that "'terrorists' use GrapheneOS".
Eventually we see a Chat Control esque law outright banning unapproved operating systems or unlocking devices. The authoritarian ratchet turns slowly but steadily, even as you sleep.
And all of the big tech corps support this vision of the future. Apple, Google Microsoft, Meta... They all release locked-down hardware and software, and have so far been on board with the convergence towards unmodifiable trusted computing. This may accelerate as local AI inference becomes commonplace and CorpGov demands unmodifiable safety controls that mediate the use of onboard models.
this solution is not available to the majority of people. ok, well, they could buy a phone from china with a chinese android version. but i don't know if i would want that either.
Honestly just asking what good is Android certification on a device that has no network access?
Turn certification off and your... banking apps... and wireless pay... and play store... and online game cheat detectors... stop working? That you... already weren't using apparently because you have no network?
Sorry, I'm having a really the hard time following the use case behind the outrage here.
Everyone is mad because they won't have Android certification on devices that can't benefit from Android certification?
"I'm just surprised how the responses here(including the original announcement post) at HN of all places are mild and at times indifferent to the fact that we are about to give up control of our devices and make Google the arbitrator of what we can run on them"
Some might argue the corporate OS[1] user never had "control of [their] devices"
As in the past, more hassles are to come for Android users, but some might doubt this idea that users currently have control or ever had control
Why the hassles
Because the user has no control over the OS
The corporation might increase or decrease the hassles, making users happy or unhappy (or indifferent), but either way the user never has control
In a non-corporate OS the user can generally edit the OS to her liking
Introducing hassles in a non-corporate would cause users who were annoyed to remove them
In other words, if users choose a non-corporate OS where users have control then there is no need to "raise awareness among people, among law makers or people whose opinions matter to make Google take notice"
1. For example, the ones from Silicon Valley and Redmond
I use Android over iphone precisely because I'm free to install whatever apps I want.
With this planned change my reasons to ditch Android and go to Apple increase dramatically. Why would i want half assed google walled garden when I could get the Apple one?
Sucks for the people who can't afford an Apple device and honestly sucks for all of us who enjoyed installing all kinds of apps on our devices.
Combined with bad security practice from OEMs, preinstalled bloatware, app fragmentation (I love having Samsung "Phone" app and stock phone app at the same time) and customer service (try replacing your phone battery and compare the experience of ubreakifix and Apple store), I don't see a reason to go Android.
(P.S. people who cannot afford the latest iPhone can always purchase a two year old used/"refurbished" phone. It's a solid choice and many people do that. The fact that you can now add Apple Care to 4 year old device makes this more viable.)
I must live in a parallel world because here it’s significantly easier to get an Android phone fixed than an iPhone. Plus you don’t have to pay Apple extortionate price for parts.
Not "always", Apple doesn't provide official warranty in my country, and even replacing batteries carries significant risk. Forget about more involved types of servicing. There are lots of places like that.
Yeah, this is exactly my reasoning too. And with Google making it harder for OSes like GrapheneOS to run on Pixel devices, my next device will have to be an Apple one. There's nothing left in the Android ecosystem for me.
Yup, same here. I've even talked family members into joining me. If this goes through and locks me out of installing things that aren't officially signed, I'll be done with Android.
At least, the standard version. If Samsung or someone keeps it open, I'd probably move to that.
I have an iphone and I feel a frequent nagging in the back of my head to switch to android despite the serious created by ecosystem lock-in and it's solely for the benefit of sideloading. Like you said, why would I leave apple's refined and increasingly customizable walled garden for google's half-assed one? Especially when Google is explicitly an ad company (I know apple isn't that much better).
Why go from a devil to another? Consider Ubuntu Touch it's actually pretty good and the dev community is really welcoming. Feel like the old school linux groups.
Well, for one I do a lot of Photography with my phone because I enjoy the flexibility and portability of it.
I do have a good camera but when you're out and about its still too big for my liking. Most importantly, phones now a days come with a roughly 100mm equivalent and thats kind of my favorite lens for street photography (weird, I know, I enjoy taking close up photos of buildings, signs, cars).
Another reason why i like phone photography is how quickly i can share my pictures with the people i care. I don't really care for posting my photos on social media that much I want to send good photos of my travel/life to my friends through chatrooms.
So a good camera on a phone is essential to me. Particularly a good telephoto and a good main camera (so like 30-100mm).
With that in mind my range of possible phones is drastically reduced. Of course, I enjoy side loading apps and so as of now I've been relatively happy with something like the pixel 8 pro that I've had for a while. But I recently compared it to the iphone 16 pro and that one is better when it comes to the casual photography/videography experience by a lot. So I was already wavering and with these changes it feels like the final nail in the coffin to me.
I am out of the loop with the entire thing. I used to an android dev back then. Google's shenanigans is the reason why I left mobile dev. Does this mean I cannot even compile and install apps on my phone from android studio?
The target is more the likes of f-droid or the Amazon Store or Epic going "We don't like the Play Store policy, download Fortnite.apk from us", than developers compiling stuff and loading them on their own phone
Same. Going to go for the prettier jailed garden instead of the uglier one. Can pay the cost of ugly with freedom. But if you are gonna get jailed anyways, why not choose the one with better interior decoration ?
I too am considering that. I give up many smartphone benefits in the name of privacy and control, but if open source Android withers, then I'm going to shift to choosing quality and service.
Well to be fair even if Android were completely open: In the US, your phone is still beholden to small number carriers. They get to decide what devices can connect to their network. This determines much of the hardware and software of the phones on their networks.
So ultimately they own the devices that connect to them. That's why I've already stopped paying for phones and just get free ones when offered. If I do pay for one again it'll just be the cheapest Chinese one available.
Same boat. Wouldn't be hard to switch either - Android and iOS are virtually indistinguishable on the UI side now. That was the last thing holding me back.
> Why would i want half assed google walled garden when I could get the Apple one?
Can’t disagree more.
Android has both better phones and better UX. Apple is usually lagging the Asian brands by years.
I went from a Pixel 3A to an iPhone 13 and just switched back to a Pixel 10 Pro and gosh the iPhone was a complete wreck. It’s even worse with their new UI.
Unless you are somehow stuck in the Apple ecosystem, I don’t understand why people pay more for it. The idea than the Android experience is somehow subpar when all Apple has done for the past five years is merely copying it is crazy to me.
Apple has Apple Silicon, designers of the most advanced ARM processors in the world. The latest iPhone is usually about twice as fast as the latest flagship from Google or Samsung. And that's not even factoring in the performance benefits of native-compiled, static-lifetime languages like Objective-C and Swift compared to Android's Java and Dalvik/ART based ecosystem.
I was an iPhone user from 2009 to 2019. In 2019, when the iTunes backup from my failed iPhone 4S wouldn't restore to an iPhone SE (it made the phone boot loop) I got frustrated and went Android.
I decided to "sideload" all non-stock software on my Android phone. I never have setup a Google Play account. I kept all the APKs for the software I loaded over the years that I used that phone.
I just got a new Android phone a couple of weeks ago. I was able to just load all the software I use day-to-day from APKs (except for a few that are, apparently, processor-specific). I imported my SMS, contacts, and call logs using a nice FOSS app[0]. It felt remarkably like moving to a new PC does. It was nice.
I am really sad Google is ending this moving forward. Jackasses.
I got a new Android phone recently as well. I am trying to see how far I can get without signing into a Google or Motorola (this is a Motorola phone) account. So far so good. I can't download any apps from the app store that were not already included when I activated the phone but I can use fdroid so I am good for the most part.
I'm using a Motorola phone myself and I'm having great luck with it. Newer stuff is coming in XAPK format packages and I've had no luck side loading any of those apps. So far I've been able to do without so it hasn't been a problem, just an annoyance.
I recently joined it as I hated feeling powerless about this change in Android. Becoming one more working on a third option is very freeing. I'd recommend it, plus Ubuntu Touch is surprisingly a nice OS.
Just remember that the play store was ruled a monopoly and the app store wasn't because the "app store doesn't even allow competition, so how could it be anti-competitive?"
It's no surprise that Google will start mirroring Apple more if closed ecosystems cannot be monopolies.
If you promise consumers that your new platform is an "open" one, you are creating a new market where devices will be made by multiple vendors and antitrust law will apply.
Google chose accelerated platform growth in exchange for being bound by antitrust restrictions.
If you create a new platform that that customers know in advance is a walled garden, like XBox, you do not face the same restrictions.
That's how the existing law works.
If you don't like how the existing law works, you have to do what the EU did and change it.
And the funniest part? The people that decried the 30% cut and went up to fight against Apple and Google themselves are going to be forcibly taking a 50% cut on their own user-generated content after a years' grace or so.
"Developers will ordinarily earn 50% of the V-Bucks value from sales in their islands, but from December 2025 through the end of 2026, the rate will be 100%."
The government isn't worried about control, but economics.
Google verifying developer identities but not controlling distribution, satisfies all relevant economic considerations. If it was about not letting Google control Android, they certainly wouldn't be letting Google decide the development roadmap. (The $25 fee doesn't count - the government has no problem charging multiples of that for anyone who drives a car or wants an ID card.)
As for Apple, they still have their antitrust lawsuit ongoing. Apple v Epic was only the first fire.
It just keeps getting worse. I think this is going to single-handedly destroy the OSS ecosystem that Android enjoys. It is incredibly frustrating watching this play out without having an alternative to migrate to.
> I think this is going to single-handedly destroy the OSS ecosystem that Android enjoys.
This was always the plan. Co-opt FLOSS with services running on FLOSS platforms that are not, themselves, FLOSS. Make it insanely unattractive to run actual FLOSS services on the otherwise FLOSS platform. At that point, it might as well be what Apple does.
There's a reason why rms was insistent upon GPL, but he never did have a real answer to that sort of corporate behavior.
It would be righteous for it to destroy all of Android, not just its ecosystem.
The obvious alternative is Linux phones. Granted, the tech sets us back by maybe two decades, but at least we're almost at the stage where we can rapidfire develop our own apps or open source apps using LLM assistance.
A key question here is if installation of Google Apps can fail verification if the device is offline, or if they have some magic local public key chain of pre-authed all OK keys.
DEVELOPER_VERIFICATION_FAILED_REASON_DEVELOPER_BLOCKED is very clearly the purpose of the whole thing. Presumably this one can be triggered on an already installed app - a key question being how that triggering occurs. i.e. will the Play Store act to push out details of developers that are now blocked so devices can act on it?
> Presumably this one can be triggered on an already installed app - a key question being how that triggering occurs. i.e. will the Play Store act to push out details of developers that are now blocked so devices can act on it?
Your "presumably" is doing a _lot_ of work; these strings are from the PackageInstaller, and go along with all of the other reasons you can't install an APK.
Historically, apps that were pulled from the Play Store and developer accounts revoked due to malware do _not_ affect apps on the end-user device, and there's no current sign of this changing with this specific project. Google have generally achieved this goal using Play Protect, the separate app/service which _can_ download revocation lists and signal end-users to delete malicious apps, and there's no indication this will change.
Android has a bunch of special signing keys (vendor, Google, that kind of thing) that get special treatment. I assume the same will apply here.
I don't have much of a problem with developers getting blocked, blocking malware shops is the entire point.
Installations failing because of a network problem is different, though. The Android ecosystem can trivially leverage the existing app certificates + occasionally updated CRLs to verify app developers. Android needing to call to the net before installing an APK seems over the top.
> I don't have much of a problem with developers getting blocked...
for building an alternative YouTube frontend. Or a torrenting app. Or due to sanctions / trade wars. (If you think these can't happen to you personally, imagine a Mega-Trump who's even Trumpier than Trump getting elected US president.)
What's malware to Google isn't necessarily malware to the user.
It will work the same way Play Protect does for blocking installation of malware. I don't think it will trigger on already installed apps, as I think package verifies require an actual update to the apk before they will trigger.
Yes, so much for portability, the portability ship now is in the hand of two corporates, that do not care about what a user wants. The convenience, it offers, depends on the profitability of these corporates.
Well, I do not want to just in to one walled garden to another, so, I think, this is the end of portable devices for me. That is the stick, that Google and Apple both using to keep us in their hands, so, I'm going to do my best to say: No thank you, and F*ck off.
I might not ever buy a flagship or high-end smartphone anymore, but get a smaller laptop, and keep an old or cheap Android handy, which will have very little personal data in it. I can easily tether the Laptop with my mobile and do most of the things that are needed.
Yes, for bank applications, and some other applications, that requires app, I will keep the cheap Android handy. But, it not a personal device anymore, the thing that I loved about Android, it's just there, because it has to.
And I am done with a mobile device till a true Linux based mobile become available.
Readit News
This is the time to ask what we can do about this, how do we stop it. How do we raise awareness among people, among law makers or people whose opinions matter to make Google take notice.
I'm all for alternatives like linux phones but it's not realistic in the timeframe. It will be a sad day if this comes to pass without least bit of resistance.
Apple controls ridiculous detail of your application and there are many developers who think that it is necessary for Apple to keep the high quality of iOS.
Actually I was shocked when one of my coworkers told me that it is a very good idea and Google should have done it sooner.
Those users knew in advance what they were buying into, since Apple was honest about the nature of the platform they were offering for sale.
Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to -- and it's solely Google's fault that Google lied about Android being both open to running any software you like and open source.
Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.
Deleted Comment
You and me don't get a vote on the Google board. The current government is not what I'd call fiercely pro-consumer. People say that money talks, but what's really in this season is tacky golden bribes; not an area where consumer advocates have a comparative advantage.
Raising awareness for a change that Google is already communicating widely and openly, is unlikely to scare Google very much.
If you want to take this seriously, it's going to need something beyond the usual token resistance that consists of angry social media posts.
Eventually we see a Chat Control esque law outright banning unapproved operating systems or unlocking devices. The authoritarian ratchet turns slowly but steadily, even as you sleep.
And all of the big tech corps support this vision of the future. Apple, Google Microsoft, Meta... They all release locked-down hardware and software, and have so far been on board with the convergence towards unmodifiable trusted computing. This may accelerate as local AI inference becomes commonplace and CorpGov demands unmodifiable safety controls that mediate the use of onboard models.
What's the situation now? Because without those it's unfortunatly useless to me.
Turn certification off and your... banking apps... and wireless pay... and play store... and online game cheat detectors... stop working? That you... already weren't using apparently because you have no network?
Sorry, I'm having a really the hard time following the use case behind the outrage here.
Everyone is mad because they won't have Android certification on devices that can't benefit from Android certification?
Some might argue the corporate OS[1] user never had "control of [their] devices"
As in the past, more hassles are to come for Android users, but some might doubt this idea that users currently have control or ever had control
Why the hassles
Because the user has no control over the OS
The corporation might increase or decrease the hassles, making users happy or unhappy (or indifferent), but either way the user never has control
In a non-corporate OS the user can generally edit the OS to her liking
Introducing hassles in a non-corporate would cause users who were annoyed to remove them
In other words, if users choose a non-corporate OS where users have control then there is no need to "raise awareness among people, among law makers or people whose opinions matter to make Google take notice"
1. For example, the ones from Silicon Valley and Redmond
People are aware, they just don't care.
With this planned change my reasons to ditch Android and go to Apple increase dramatically. Why would i want half assed google walled garden when I could get the Apple one?
Sucks for the people who can't afford an Apple device and honestly sucks for all of us who enjoyed installing all kinds of apps on our devices.
Combined with bad security practice from OEMs, preinstalled bloatware, app fragmentation (I love having Samsung "Phone" app and stock phone app at the same time) and customer service (try replacing your phone battery and compare the experience of ubreakifix and Apple store), I don't see a reason to go Android.
(P.S. people who cannot afford the latest iPhone can always purchase a two year old used/"refurbished" phone. It's a solid choice and many people do that. The fact that you can now add Apple Care to 4 year old device makes this more viable.)
They just shipped security updates for the iPhone 6S which came out 10 years ago.
And if Android's removal of rights lags 5-10 years behind Apple again in the future, that's a win.
At least, the standard version. If Samsung or someone keeps it open, I'd probably move to that.
I do have a good camera but when you're out and about its still too big for my liking. Most importantly, phones now a days come with a roughly 100mm equivalent and thats kind of my favorite lens for street photography (weird, I know, I enjoy taking close up photos of buildings, signs, cars).
Another reason why i like phone photography is how quickly i can share my pictures with the people i care. I don't really care for posting my photos on social media that much I want to send good photos of my travel/life to my friends through chatrooms.
So a good camera on a phone is essential to me. Particularly a good telephoto and a good main camera (so like 30-100mm).
With that in mind my range of possible phones is drastically reduced. Of course, I enjoy side loading apps and so as of now I've been relatively happy with something like the pixel 8 pro that I've had for a while. But I recently compared it to the iphone 16 pro and that one is better when it comes to the casual photography/videography experience by a lot. So I was already wavering and with these changes it feels like the final nail in the coffin to me.
Deleted Comment
So ultimately they own the devices that connect to them. That's why I've already stopped paying for phones and just get free ones when offered. If I do pay for one again it'll just be the cheapest Chinese one available.
Can’t disagree more.
Android has both better phones and better UX. Apple is usually lagging the Asian brands by years.
I went from a Pixel 3A to an iPhone 13 and just switched back to a Pixel 10 Pro and gosh the iPhone was a complete wreck. It’s even worse with their new UI.
Unless you are somehow stuck in the Apple ecosystem, I don’t understand why people pay more for it. The idea than the Android experience is somehow subpar when all Apple has done for the past five years is merely copying it is crazy to me.
extreme, EXTREME minority opinion stated as fact
> when all Apple has done for the past five years is merely copying it
This is a popular refrain but never passes the sniff test. Android has nothing equivalent to AirPods, airdrop, find my, list goes on and on.
I was an iPhone user from 2009 to 2019. In 2019, when the iTunes backup from my failed iPhone 4S wouldn't restore to an iPhone SE (it made the phone boot loop) I got frustrated and went Android.
I decided to "sideload" all non-stock software on my Android phone. I never have setup a Google Play account. I kept all the APKs for the software I loaded over the years that I used that phone.
I just got a new Android phone a couple of weeks ago. I was able to just load all the software I use day-to-day from APKs (except for a few that are, apparently, processor-specific). I imported my SMS, contacts, and call logs using a nice FOSS app[0]. It felt remarkably like moving to a new PC does. It was nice.
I am really sad Google is ending this moving forward. Jackasses.
[0] https://github.com/tmo1/sms-ie
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/
I recently joined it as I hated feeling powerless about this change in Android. Becoming one more working on a third option is very freeing. I'd recommend it, plus Ubuntu Touch is surprisingly a nice OS.
It's no surprise that Google will start mirroring Apple more if closed ecosystems cannot be monopolies.
Google chose accelerated platform growth in exchange for being bound by antitrust restrictions.
If you create a new platform that that customers know in advance is a walled garden, like XBox, you do not face the same restrictions.
That's how the existing law works.
If you don't like how the existing law works, you have to do what the EU did and change it.
Dead Comment
"Developers will ordinarily earn 50% of the V-Bucks value from sales in their islands, but from December 2025 through the end of 2026, the rate will be 100%."
https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-developers-will-soon-...
But hey, I can surely launch my own storefront to sell in-game items on top of Fortnite right?
Right?
Oh.
Google verifying developer identities but not controlling distribution, satisfies all relevant economic considerations. If it was about not letting Google control Android, they certainly wouldn't be letting Google decide the development roadmap. (The $25 fee doesn't count - the government has no problem charging multiples of that for anyone who drives a car or wants an ID card.)
As for Apple, they still have their antitrust lawsuit ongoing. Apple v Epic was only the first fire.
Anonymity is under attack in general
This was always the plan. Co-opt FLOSS with services running on FLOSS platforms that are not, themselves, FLOSS. Make it insanely unattractive to run actual FLOSS services on the otherwise FLOSS platform. At that point, it might as well be what Apple does.
There's a reason why rms was insistent upon GPL, but he never did have a real answer to that sort of corporate behavior.
The obvious alternative is Linux phones. Granted, the tech sets us back by maybe two decades, but at least we're almost at the stage where we can rapidfire develop our own apps or open source apps using LLM assistance.
Kindly disagree. Linux phones are very far behind.
The obvious alternative is an alternative OS based on AOSP. Like GrapheneOS.
DEVELOPER_VERIFICATION_FAILED_REASON_DEVELOPER_BLOCKED is very clearly the purpose of the whole thing. Presumably this one can be triggered on an already installed app - a key question being how that triggering occurs. i.e. will the Play Store act to push out details of developers that are now blocked so devices can act on it?
Your "presumably" is doing a _lot_ of work; these strings are from the PackageInstaller, and go along with all of the other reasons you can't install an APK.
Historically, apps that were pulled from the Play Store and developer accounts revoked due to malware do _not_ affect apps on the end-user device, and there's no current sign of this changing with this specific project. Google have generally achieved this goal using Play Protect, the separate app/service which _can_ download revocation lists and signal end-users to delete malicious apps, and there's no indication this will change.
I don't have much of a problem with developers getting blocked, blocking malware shops is the entire point.
Installations failing because of a network problem is different, though. The Android ecosystem can trivially leverage the existing app certificates + occasionally updated CRLs to verify app developers. Android needing to call to the net before installing an APK seems over the top.
for building an alternative YouTube frontend. Or a torrenting app. Or due to sanctions / trade wars. (If you think these can't happen to you personally, imagine a Mega-Trump who's even Trumpier than Trump getting elected US president.)
What's malware to Google isn't necessarily malware to the user.
They apparently feel very differently.
We got rid of the license on the OS; but they found other ways to put a license on the phone.
Well, I do not want to just in to one walled garden to another, so, I think, this is the end of portable devices for me. That is the stick, that Google and Apple both using to keep us in their hands, so, I'm going to do my best to say: No thank you, and F*ck off.
I might not ever buy a flagship or high-end smartphone anymore, but get a smaller laptop, and keep an old or cheap Android handy, which will have very little personal data in it. I can easily tether the Laptop with my mobile and do most of the things that are needed.
Yes, for bank applications, and some other applications, that requires app, I will keep the cheap Android handy. But, it not a personal device anymore, the thing that I loved about Android, it's just there, because it has to.
And I am done with a mobile device till a true Linux based mobile become available.