There is a petition for stopping google from forcing apps to go through google app store
The petition: Petition · Stop Google from limiting APK file usage - Vereinigte Staaten · Change.org
If you want some info on this check this:
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It’s a nice idea, but why is Google going to give up all that revenue because of a petition? Even Samsung has had problems establishing its own store. There was an anti-trust lawsuit against Google in 2021 and that wasn’t enough to change things.
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I’d say any action or attempt to knock down the alphabet soup greedy f**cks a peg is a good thing™
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Ha alphabet soup.
I agree. I’m just jaded I guess.
If nothing matters, then, everything matters =))
Doing nothing is certainly not going to help the situation.
It takes less time to sign the petition than leaving a comment on this post.
I would say its the least one can do.
Not that I’ve ever had luck with petitions…
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Ah, but my point is this is doing nothing.
You are entitled to that opinion. I asked a legitimate question about what this is supposed to accomplish and I got back what appears to be an emotional argument.
Is it going to be sent to US congress members? Is it going to be used in the EU to try and do something to leverage Google? Or is it performative like making your profile picture the flag of whatever country is suffering the most this week?
But TBH, my first question should have been:
What is this going to accomplish over and above the recent ruling for Epic Games that allows people to install approved 1st-party app stores of their own through Google Play?
So again, what is the point of this petition?
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Now there’s 14,933.
And I don’t even develop for Google devices, but never hurts.
You are here to argue and I am not.
Your questions have their answer in my initial post.
There is a 9 minute video explaining the situation and more information in the description of the video.
While I’m not a lawyer and don’t know all the potential legal framework and past cases etc. there might not only be strong interests by Google to keep this limitation, but other interests might be keen on preventing any legal precedent being set on preventing these kinds of monopolies
It could be hard to argue that if this was established for Google on their platform that it wouldn’t apply to other platforms, though they are somewhat different in that Google doesn’t make their own platform entirely or closed in the same way
Would this, for example, mean that Nintendo could be forced to stop preventing non-signed non-verified things to run on their platform? There might easily be reasons why it wouldn’t apply, but if it’s not clear that it wouldn’t there would be several other companies that would be interested in preventing such cases from being successful
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It wasn’t my intent to argue with you. I just don’t see the point. But you’re right, I’ve spent enough time on this. I wish your petition well.
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It is not my petition.
“Your petition” here just means “the petition you promote/support here”
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It is a fair assumption but you do not know that for sure.
If he wanted to say that he could have said “I wish the petition well” or something like “Good luck with the petition”.
Anyway it felt appropriate to clarify just in case someone reads the comment without context.
I did read your comment as well and unfortunately I did not understood everything you said. So I am not sure how to respond.
There will probably be a lot of edge cases that are not taken into account atm.
Like what will they do to prevent people sharing android dev accounts.
I did not work with publishers so I can’t even imagine if that will be affected or not.
Probably the most affected by this will be people that make games as a hobby for android.
It used to be that you just export the game and download it on your phone.
They added the sign key thing after that.
And now you have to register to google aswell…
It will just be easier to not bother with exporting games for mobile all together. Or so it seems to me =/
You seem to just be looking to argue if you jump to that kind of conclusion of someone wishing you luck
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In my honest opinion, I think the problem here is that it’s a petition. Petitions have no power at all in a legal sense. They cannot force any company or entity to do anything different. Sure, they can “suggest” what they should do, but they are under no obligations to do so.
However, what MIGHT actually be a good idea is an EU initiative, such as the one proposed not too long ago of the “Stop Killing Games”, since an initiative like that CAN actually have an impact, and CAN force companies or entities such as google to change certain things.
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I understand and agree with you. I would only push back that “it is a problem”.
It is just an alternative.
In the video it recommends to contact your local regulators as well as signing the petition.
In the video description there is this link https://keepandroidopen.org/
There is a lot of information on what everyone can do except for the petition.
I pushed the petition forward since this takes less time (in my opinion) and is probably the one most people will be willing to do (since it doesn’t take much effort).
Exactly, the problem is there’s a lot of money in this from a lot of companies, Apple, Nintendo, etc., who might back a case to keep this from getting precedent
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while monopolies are bad, there is a concern that has nothing to do with google, and that is security.
If you allow any third party apk to be installed in someone’s phone, that could lead to malicious code infecting people’s phones.
also, phones are used to authenticate logins to a google account and to other accounts of the user.
I speak from linux, which has a trusted repository that is used to install programs, you don’t EVER want to install something from a third party, unless you are a very advanced user and know you are downloading from a trusted source, and even then it can break the OS.
a different thing is a binary, which just runs (godot is an example). I don’t know enough about the android architecture to tell why it needs an apk, which is basically a package, instead of being able to run a binary, but maybe that’s what this petition should be about.
the average user, and specially the average phone user, should not be trusted with this power.
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Which, monopolies aside, is what Google will argue if this goes to court, and would be hard to argue against, especially if they argue they don’t restrict access through things like charging for distributing apps or for signing apps (the latter at least is not true for Apple AFAIK, as you need to have a subscription to publish on iPhone)
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It’s always a user settable option in every Android version so far to prevent side loading.
Usually in settings/Apps or hidden in Developer options (tap 7 times on build number in About phone to enable if you didn’t know;)
Edit : and it’s on by default, so no side loading plus you have to explicitly enable apps to allow app installation through them in recent Android versions.
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