Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
This includes apps shared between friends, distributed through F-Droid, built by hobbyists for personal use.
Independent developers, church and community groups, and hobbyists alike will all be frozen out of being able to develop and distribute their software.
Registration requires:
- Paying a fee to Google - Agreeing to Google's Terms and Conditions - Surrendering your government-issued identification - Providing evidence of your private signing key - Listing all current and all future application identifiers
If a developer does not comply, their apps get silently blocked on every Android device worldwide.
As it runs through Google Play Services, it's pretty likely they'll boil the frog and make it even harder in the future. Moving to an open platform is a good idea.
It doesn't affect the phone's security in any way, unless you specifically tweak a security-related option in that panel. It doesn't degrade the device encryption or Google Play Services. I don't see how any app could balk while it's enabled. There are no apps I have that even run differently. I use the same banking apps and all the other things as normal, whether or not this mode is enabled for me.
I’m not sure if you would have to re-enable it every time to sideload updates or new apps. You can also install via adb with no waiting period.
Is this confirmed? If so, that largely removes my issue with the 24 hour waiting period for enabling/disabling dev mode.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
And my work doesn't permit it even with byod, it's so annoying. I've stopped running byod for that reason but now I'm stuck with two phones again.
Besides, I would not comply anyway. I would just delete the device.
In the early days of BYOD, all they could do is delete the device if it would be lost. Which was not really a bother to me because I back it up to my own servers anyway, and in that case it would be lost anyway. And they would enforce a few basic things like setting a decent pincode and device encryption.
But lately the MDM and antimalware solutions have become more intrusive. Recently my work's MDM complained about an app I had on the personal side of my phone, something they should have no visibility of. Also they now want to route all the traffic through their VPN to inspect it which was obviously a non-starter.
Android 7 is when always-on-vpn was could be enforced by an admin, in 2016.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260312134021/https://developer...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260328133800/https://developer...
I don't think Google is doing this out of some egotistical obsession over "control," it's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
There are plenty of problems with walled gardens, but IMO this isn't one of them.
We'd all be safest in a cage but no one wants to live like that
So sanctioning Google means taking the smartphone away from 95% of their population. Which isn't going to happen.
Google is doing this because Google wants to.
It's also that that fraction is one they don't get any income from. We don't use Google accounts, Google apps or services etc.
So they don't get to track us as much except the few things you can't turn off in play services. Not everyone can work with custom rom (on those the new restriction obviously doesn't apply at all)
Maybe it's because direct installs are too hard to do already? Fortnite tried to go to that route and failed, if Fortnite couldn't make it who can?
And let's be real, I'm not going to accept any talk of "security" from Google when I type "chatgpt" in the search bar of the play store and I have an app with a counterfeit logo coming up at the top spot.
What I am not sure is what will happen if I then remove the "google account" which I don't want in my device.
The amount of misinformation to scare people is alarming.
What?
You only have to change that setting once, and you can do it in advance (before the restriction takes effect). So you don't even have to wait 24 hours at all.
I can see this change having negative effects on the android ecosystem, but the direct impact on your freedom to install apps on your device is basically zero. If that's not the case, please tell me what I've missed.
I get the rest but I can’t get my head around people who find these two things upsetting.
I have a company with both App Store and Play Store apps out, but when I wanted to use my Personal account to distribute a free app, it took with Apple 1 hour with registration and then one phone call to their EU Developer support to get approved. 4 months later and I am nowhere with Googles new system and have given up..
My app is now iOS and APK only, which mean no none nerd users on Android.
The issue will be your bank, your gov, your uni, and school not releasing a compatible app for you.
And nowadays a device that cannot communicate or be trusted by other actors of the network (internet) is pretty much useless.
I hope those entities will wake up and start serving equivalents functionalities via the open web.
That is why we have the good old WWW for.
In other cases, banks add Play Integrity checks to their apps, which is a more complex subject. In short, many banking apps check for the basic integrity verdict, which GrapheneOS can get. In other cases, the checks are not implemented properly, and GrapheneOS has a toggle which often gets those apps to work. Finally, a very small number of banking apps require the strong integrity verdict and the apps will refuse to run on GrapheneOS.
Although there are no statistics about this, it does seem that a majority of banking apps work or can be made to work with different compatibility toggles.
I have to use the awful thing, too, so if I go to GrapheneOS next year when, hopefully, a non-Google phone supports it, I'll have to carry two phones. Ugh.
We can use AI to take back the entire tech stack.
Every moat, every walled garden, every infrastructure piece can be rebuilt with AI.
We're seeing it with desktop apps, with games. It will happen to infrastructure and platforms. I'm itching at the opportunity to build open cloud primitives and P2P social protocols.
We don't need big tech anymore. We just need to be able to run our models.
Who is Ford to tell me I can’t have a widget for each of my ford EVs visible at the same time? Or even that the single-car widget they do allow has has to be four times bigger than I want it to be, and waste screen real estate on dead space and things that I don’t want?
Can you imagine of those "de-banking" people actually existed and could read?
Honestly at this point, I'm just gonna start transitioning to Ubuntu Touch. The Android experiment has run its course.
The narrative that GrapheneOS is so focused on security that it affects usability, especially given the context, is nonsense. The change that's being discussed here doesn't affect GrapheneOS or other non-GMS operating systems. The only affected OSes are the ones that install Google apps with privileged permissions.
If you want to switch to something else, go ahead. GrapheneOS is still a better overall choice.
On stock OSs, google signs major portions of the OS and is highly privileged, which is impossible to sidestep.
Optional is obviously easier than impossible.
Perhaps they're using "surrender" in its meaning of "hand over something you didn't want to hand over", "give up under duress"?
I agree with the wording, having to give your ID to Google when we'd all much rather that they don't have it is a surrender, it's dubious consent (read: not consent) it's precisely as vile and forceful as the word surrender implies it is
Google has no need to know who anyone is here. I want to provide an app, someone else wants to use my app, all entirely off Google's sacred platforms. We should be able to work together, but in comes a middleman who demands to see our IDs because he owns the platform and can just do that. That ID, of course, is digitally stored and will be retained indefinitely.
Please don't use one loss of privacy to justify more.
Something, something, slippery slope.
Despite Google's best efforts to automatically ban malicious developers, catching many legitimate developers in the crossfire, their store isn't exactly a bastion of quality or scam-free.
I honestly doubt their "best efforts".
Fact of life is they make money off apps including malicious ones. For the same reason a lot of promoted content on Google search is clickbait and they even serve malicious apps. Money corrupts.
I'm sure you will not object when that happens. you are not a murderer or rapist, are you?
I hope this isn't satire, because it's hilarious how often when someone logically extends the arguments of the authoritarian corporate tech overlords until they turn into a direct retelling of dystopian nightmares from the past, someone pops up and goes "Yes that is my dream world, I would like that please"
Obviously this does not affect “every device worldwide”. I don’t have a single Android phone, and the devices I own that do run Android are not affected.
You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
Tech is cool, but it's not an end in itself. Serving people should be. And if people are getting hurt, it's not working well, even if those people are not the ones that read Hacker News.
The real problem here is not that Google is doing this bad thing. The real problem is that they can do this bad thing. They shouldn't have this power. Something needs to be done to rain in Google and take back Android as an open platform.
Nobody reads warnings or errors. StackOverflow is full of questions where someone pastes a clear error message and asks what they have to do when the very error message tells them the solution.
Also, scammers just tell people to ignore warnings and they do it. If someone is able to convince you that your child is in danger and that you have to bypass all warnings to help them, you _will_ do it.
Why should that be a concern to a phone OS provider? A concern so important that they are willing to cripple couple billions of devices.
Then, generally, "software is just a tool like a knife" doesn't hold because software today is more a service than a tangible good. Companies continue to update the programs and things can happen in the cloud with limited user control.
A huge number of people just click accept to any popup they get because they're so fed up with seeing them. It's something that is often analysed in design of medical products
It was really difficult to explain to Korea that the additional warnings they wanted me to put in front of the tool operators were actually causing more harm than good. The cultural divide made this really difficult to approach.
"What do you mean the American mfg staff don't actually read everything?!"
"Yeah... Especially at the ATX line. We kind of go off vague shapes around here"
You can put a very clear warning symbol front and centre, and people will just mentally gloss over it
Hard disagree. My grandma is just going to follow the scammers directions.
If your grandma will follow current instructions, she will follow these new instructions including a 24 hour wait.
Your grandma will follow instructions to walk down to walgreens and buy a brand new device if they tell her. The solution has nothing to do with the device and everything to do with you needing to be an adult and figure out how to get your grandma to not follow directions of scammers.
This isn't a tech problem and you cannot solve it with tech.
The phone scammers who are saying the FBI/NSA/IRS will arrest you unless you install sketchy remote access software or other malware are rather convincing to a certain demographic of people and no amount of text on the screen will stop that. It all comes down to whether or not you view the tradeoff being that vulnerable people are worth protecting with this measure worldwide or not.
Should Google be less than an asshole in all things? Yes.
I think there’s this like “something must be done now!” attitude of self-important, busybodies I can’t get behind… even if they’re right.
Why have people convinced themselves into thinking now is the most important thing in the world? That if it doesn’t happen now so that it makes me happy instantly it isn’t an option?
Evolution; social, tech, biological, legal, just fucking takes time, and that’s a feature.
There will be a period in which there’s a ton of food over there but your little fishy fins can’t get to it, and that sucks, but deal with it yourself, or just chill and let things happen. I promise if it’s important someone will solve it eventually and the scales do not need to be tipped for every little thing like phone app permissiveness.
In the meantime, you are free to not buy an android phone if you don’t like the system that Google has produced. You seem to think that because you can see its insides that it is collectively owned. It isn’t. Google owns it. Talk of talking it from its owners, is theft. In this case, justified entirely because you don’t like a process they decided on.
Don’t make me defend Google, I fucking hate Google.
There is a third position beside "I agree/disagree with the tradeoff", which is "I don't consider the tradeoff as stated truthful and refuse to frame the conversation that way".
Every closing of rights comes with a legitimate-sounding reason. Protect the children, etc. Most activist have been through this process enough times to see the play coming a mile away.
It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
Thank you. When you see it once, it becomes so obvious everywhere else. Every single time it's just assertions without hard statistics, always perpetrated by the side that also happens to profit from it or accomplishes something else they really want to do. I'm not going to deny that the number of people who get scammed through sideloading isn't zero, but I don't have to accept as unwritten fact that these lockdowns are actually about that, or that this number of people is significant at all compared to everyone who just wants to install off-Google Play apps, like what Google implied and almost everyone here just accepted.
> It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
The suddenness of the shift is shocking. One of my most popular comments, from no more than several months ago, was about this very topic. It was about the way Google will, like all other corporations, slowly ratchet up their 'measures' until there's no way left but their way. I basically just retold that comment here with very few real changes, and it's already greyed out at the near bottom of the thread. But the shift itself isn't unexpected. Lots of people here aren't the customizer, tinkerer, off the beaten path kind of 'hacker', but the tech enthusiast kind. Lots have direct links to Silicon Valley and the tech overlords of today. As the tech industry consumes everything else in the world, their rhetoric shifts from "Look at all these things we'll let you do!" to "We own you", so does the average sentiment of the users.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a propaganda technique that tech companies have used for long against open source and competitors. The propaganda is to pretend that a 24 hour cooldown and making it difficult to install externals apps is for the good of the user meanwhile stealing their data and giving it to anybody that pays for it.
People are getting hurt. Mass spying should stop now.
A scammer managed to convince a relative to share their screen during a Whatsapp video call. Luckly, said relative didn't use banking apps on the phone, the bank rejected as suspicious the transaction on the computer which would have sent money to the scammer, and the relative asked me for help before going to the ATM to unblock the account (I then contacted the bank and had them fully block the account as a precaution, and told my relative to go to the bank branch the next day to change the passwords and unblock the account).
It's just a public confession that none of these organizations - not the carriers, not the government, and not Evil Google, are fit for the responsibilities they've claimed.
Small businesses getting blocked by Gmail, Twilio, etc. for legitimate activities is constant.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would turn this right around and say that until the proponents of this measure acknowledge that the Play Store is not safe and is in fact a primary vector for scams, you're just doing propaganda.
People gotta learn. Sometimes the best teacher is pain and suffering. I wish that weren’t true, but in my time on this planet, there has never been more truth to “you can lead a horse to water, but you certainly can’t make it drink it.”
Trying to save people against their will just doesn’t seem the best path. I’d rather more effort be put into education on best practices, or investment in an app sniffer that can try and identify common attack vectors. Idk, anything other than “some people are too stupid for their own good, so now we all have less freedom.” I mean truly, if you’re worried about grandma’s phone safety, only let her buy an iPhone. No android for mi-ma.
All I see here is Google snatching at the opportunity to get some of that scrumptious walled garden money.
One important way that scams reach end users are through the willing participation of ad platforms, and even before DSA (not that much has changed) people (myself included) have done countless reports of straight up scam ads with no recourse and a templated "we have found nothing wrong with the ad".
As a data point, have you not seen the Tai Chi AI ads on YouTube that will "make you a different person by the end of the week" which where run by a company that sold you a subscription via dark patterns with all the surprises that brings (like a big headache of an unsubscribe process).
Or the fact that Meta knows that X% of it's ads are scam/phising and do nothing about it because it hurts the bottomline (an AI chat will help you with references).
The hypocrisy is too much coming from Google since they are owners of the machine that feed scams right to your doorstep.
And let's not ignore all the other fronts they are fighting on to further lock down the Android platform (such as not making source available immediately and moving more of the runtime in their play services and platform integrity nonsense).
1. Is requiring developers to submit government ID actually an effective way to prevent tech support scams? Will scammers actually be deterred by a government ID requirement in addition to the existing developer registration process?
2. Is requiring developers to submit government ID the best option to prevent tech support scams? Are there other options that Google could use to make Android user less susceptible to tech support scams?
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
The tradeoff, such as it is, is acknowledged on keepandroidopen.org under the "But wait, isn't this...just about security?" section:
> The security rationale is a smokescreen. Google Play Protect already scans for malware independent of developer identity. Requiring a government ID doesn't make code safer.
Finally:
> Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
I don't think this is an excellent compromise. Scammers are persistent. I'm not convinced a 24 hour cooldown is enough to deter them in any meaningful way. I, on the other hand, am not persistent enough to wait 24 hours to install an Android app from F-Droid just to try it out.
The best solution would have been to be able to mark ANY alternative app store like fdroid as trusted and no such cooldown period would hit every time people install an app from there. This avoids that people can immediately use installed apps downloaded from an arbitrary URL but at the same time keeps the alternative app stores as a good alternative. Google decided to play unfair again.
I'm pretty convinced it is just Google testing boiling the water steady and slowly :)
It's not 100% perfect, but it helps reduce scams. And with AI, scams are probably going to get more frequent and harder to realize it's a scam.
If you know you want your phone unlocked, just start the process as soon as you get your phone, and then it's yours. It's like an extra day of shipping.
-
Edit: Google explains this more:
In these scenarios, scammers exploit fear – using threats of financial ruin, legal trouble, or harm to a loved one – to create a sense of extreme urgency. They stay on the phone with victims, coaching them to bypass security warnings and disable security settings before the victim has a chance to think or seek help.
According to a 2025 report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), 57% of surveyed adults experienced a scam in the past year, resulting in a global consumer loss of $442 billion.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would argue pretending like this is actually for anyone's security is propaganda hiding the fact that this is all for Google to tighten its grip on Android.
There are people at my gym who often have very bad form who I worry about. I will occasionally chat them up so they're not, for example, shoulder pressing with their arms outside of the scapular plane [0] or benching without any arch in their back [1]. Sometimes they appreciate it and ask me more questions. Sometimes they give me a terse 'thanks' and go back to doing it the way they want to do it.
If somehow every gym started forbidding people from using any equipment with which they could harm themselves unless they could prove, with a 24h cooling off period, that they knew the form and dangers in detail, I'm sure it would probably save a few people from suffering temporary injuries. I think it would also drive a lot of people away from any kind of sustained resistance training and be an overall net negative for public health.
Personally, I don't think such a nanny-state implementation is necessary? That you should be able to easily toggle off such a feature if you like and what happens to you happens. Perhaps there should be a 'tech-illiterate' mode toggled on by default but easily toggled off if you know how to access Developer Options with a little more forewarning about common scams. Perhaps gyms (or Google) could pay people to proactively assist and help people they see as the most vulnerable to certain kinds of exploits. Perhaps instead of spending time training Gemini to be a general-assist LLM they could train a very small local model to hyperspecifically guard against known intrusions.
There are so many more pro-social, less-draconian ways of tackling safety issues, from socialization to ongoing support to education efforts. A lockdown that just happens to also help ensure that they can extract their pound of flesh inside the abattoir that is Google Play seems at best overly protective and at worst just more corporate extraction of surplus value from individuals.
[0] https://brookbushinstitute.com/glossary/scapular-plane
[1] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/how-to-bench/#:~:text=it%2...
The risk of people cutting themselves is not a responsibility nor a concern for the knife manufacturers. I would be very upset if one day all kitchen knives would be sold blunt just to mitigate some clueless people from cutting their fingers off.
Similarly, I seriously and absolutely don't get it why people falling for scams should be a reason to require KYC to distribute apps.
Especially given that KYC-passed accounts are easily obtainable online for pennies.
Maybe before trying to go off half assed exactly like this outrage website does, you should take 5 minutes to be bothered to see if what you are saying is even mildly correct. Even five seconds of searching would tell you pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.
Lots of things are compromises intended to serve multiple goals rather than just drive one particular goal to the extreme. In that sense knives are exactly like what is happening here. You may not like that. But it is at least accurate, unlike what you wrote
anyone who ever attempts to point this out gently just gets made fun of by you while everyone backs away slowly and deletes you from their phone
The correct move is to remove the (icon for) the google app store from inexperienced user's phones. (I'm dead serious, and it works)
Unfortunately, that's exactly the move that now gets sabotaged by this google change.
So sure I'll acknowledge the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate. It does in fact marginally mitigate the precise narrow risk they state, but introduces a fatal flaw in its place. Probably unwise to let naive users use android at all anymore after this.
I don't. An hour would make the same point and provide the same level of protection. So would clicking through a few screens with very simple and easy to understand warning messages about the risk of scams. Sure, it's a compromise, but it's pretty much the opposite of excellent.
24 hours might not be enough, and there is a risk that a scammer gets a user to go into developer mode and then calls back a few days later to try and 'fix the issue' or something. At least in 24 hours the victim might talk to someone about it and then find they're being scammed.
I have many coworkers who work very hard on this problem.
The claim that Google does not care about ads integrity runs counter to my experience.
Yes I understand that Google says they care a lot about scams and that there are people there working on blocking scams. But those are words. We need to look at money.
There is a very simple way that Google can block basically all scam ads: review all ads manually before approval, and allow no dynamic changes. They won’t do this, because it would implode their business model.
The goal is maintaining a continuous stream of revenue, not killing the stream for short term gains.
Google not only benefits from scam ads, they innovated the entire scam ad economy. Prior to the proliferation of automated online ad services, ads on TV, print media et al were carefully reviewed. There were very little scams.
Naturally such a business has a scaling cap. Online websites would collaborate with advertisers directly, and there were little to no scams. Then Google and others entered the picture and innovated automatic ads with virtually no human verification. After that, we saw an entire online scam ad economy explode.
It’s not just that Google doesn’t care enough about scam ads. They created scam ads, it’s their bread and butter. Not just Google either, we see the same thing with meta on their platforms. The scams will not go away.
Google may care a lot, but if my experience is any indicator they don't care enough.
Apple's is a scam in comparison and must be repaid every year.
Full disclosure, I am an iPhone user in part because I personally like living in the walled garden. But I also acknowledge that it has its downsides. I have a separate Android device just for language learning because the open source language learning app ecosystem is basically nonexistent on Apple’s locked-down platform. I’m not thrilled about the possibility of that ecosystem withering and dying on Android, too.
If I have to wait 24h to install an app from another store, I demand the same to apply to AppStore. I see app stores just like browsers: users must have the ability to choose which browser they want when installing an operating system, and for Android, users must be able to select which app store they want and they should work the same way.
And then you have the option:
- unverified packages either temporarily (7 days)
- or indefinitely
Official docs here:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
Why do we have to be lectured on how important this change is for their safety, while the Play store continues to be the primary location scam apps come from?
When do the companies get to be the ones that have to give up their own freedoms in favor of everyone else's safety?
I strongly agree with this statement.
If a piece of public communication is intended to sway the reader's opinion without informing them (or while selectively informing them, which is close to the same thing), it is propaganda.
I don't mind warnings and even brief cool downs but 24 hours is ridiculous.
If I lose or break my phone, I have to wait 24 hours after acquiring my new phone to use the apps I previously used? It's just absurd.
If I had to explain to clients that I was unable to do work until tomorrow, I'd be ridiculed.
The vast majority of tech support scams come through apps on the Play Store. Not only that, but malicious apps get approved on the Play Store constantly.
There is no reason to take any claim that this change is meant to mitigate scams seriously, because there's no evidence to support that it makes a noticeable dent in such activity.
What this change does noticeably and impactfully do, is prevent, via chilling effects, users from being able to use their phones in ways that could lose Google and its partner vendors post-sales revenue.
As you said, serving people should be the end in itself, and this change doesn't do that - it hurts people.
I think this was probably a very easy decision for Google after they weighed benefits and harms to users and developers.
I remind you that Ai can reverse compile and find viruses and crap and they could have tested multiple gazillion apps simultaneously even before Ai.
Being naive is one thing and that is fine but trying to advocate naivety is something else.
In my opinion, its about collecting new money and forced compliance worldwide to collect more and more. Every software company wants to collect rent from around world and that is why they are tightening their noose once their they know that they have some form of monopoly. It is not just mere accident in universe.
Also. I regularly remove malware from people's android phones pro bono in and around my community. It all comes from the play store.
Simply add a setting to the phone for the technologically illiterate and/or young and old.
I can't even imagine how locked down and terrible the internet would be if we had this rhetoric around in the 90s.
1) make it optional
2) don't put it on a timer. What's most damning, in my opinion, is that this is the very definition of a bait-and-switch. Any rational person thinks this won't apply to their existing phone because it came before the rollout, right? It's only android 15 and onward? No. That's wrong, it'll apply to YOUR phone. Google. Non-Google. Doesn't matter. Android 12, 13, 14? Nope applies to them all. That's just an accident then?
Personally, I'm sick and tired of dealing with corporate overreach based on the excuse that so many people are too stupid to operate the device responsibly.
I'm on a 3rd party, no goggle account, AOSP built OS. So I don't think this immediate change in 2027 will affect me.
While AOSP is a current workaround, this whole ability to build a non-goggle android via AOSP is also under threat from goggle lockdown.
That means this trend of having to part with the OS intended for the too stupid population is only going to increase.
So, needing to depart from android completely is in the near term.
Linux phones become ever more usable, including android in a jail.
The current furiphone is a great example.
The propaganda I'm seeing is coming from Google. I can't tell you how many times lately I've seen ads on TV/streaming pushing the security narrative for Play Store. Google knows what it is doing is blatantly anti-consumer and they very much want public sentiment to think it's not.
There will always be means to scam individuals through technology. Pulling stunts like this is not justified simply because it closes off one means of doing so.
- be a registered developer, and target all Android users (Google Play Store, F-Droid, distributing .apk files, etc), or
- remain anonymous, and target only a subset of Android users (all "power users" who do the one-time 24-hour cooldown, or a small number of users if you use the student/hobbyist path, and of course anyone can install their own apps on their own device with adb).
This is definitely an unfortunate step backwards from Android's prior openness, but is still more open than iOS (my comparison from a previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939361), and is basically Google being forced by the governments of certain countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand) where malicious-app phone scams have led to a lot of people losing their savings (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909348).
No, no it is not. If Google didn't love these changes, they'd do what Apple does with the EU. Malicious compliance, or at worst, only complying there. The LLM providers do the same.
Google loves, wants, and has instigated these changes. They are not being rolled out because some governments are asking for them. Those governments would never have specifically asked for these measures anyway; they'd have asked "can you reduce these scams?". And if Google had wanted to act on this, they wouldn't have done this either because they know that the overwhelming majority of these scams are from Play Store apps or from ads, often through AdMob itself, never passing through non-store apps. Those are a sliver of scams.
This is propaganda with zero backing in evidence.
They are recommending installing F-droid.. and not accepting android's demands. Its time to have open source smart phone operating system that can not be taken hostage.
Also people should and could use the browser interface rather than apps for their banking but certain applications don't exist in browser world.
There is plenty of warning and friction to be able to do that already.
Thus, we should absolutely expect next steps for Android to slowly go into walled garden mode: no dev unlocking for certain devices, dev unlock after mandatory KYC, etc, etc.
You will still be able to install unsigned APKs, but the first-time procedure to unlock the ability will include a 24 hour wait. After that, unsigned APKs can still be installed as usual
And APKs outside of the Play store can still be distributed unsigned, subject to the 24 hour wait for Play Protect devices
I had "sideloaded" all the APKs for the software I used on the old phone and saved the APKs. Moving to a new phone was just a matter of loading all the software and copying my rsync'd backups onto the new phone. It was wonderful. Just like moving to a new PC.
I guess I'm happy I got to have this experience for a little while.
Edit: I've found a few apps I can't used because they require Play attestation. Eventually I'll hit one of those that I need and I'll be at an impasse irrespective of this particular power grab.
Edit: I have at least one app that won't run under GrapheneOS (Microsoft Authenticator) so I'll be stuck with a two-phone carry, too. >sigh<
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers... we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."
October 2000: Google adds ads.
[0] https://research.google/pubs/the-anatomy-of-a-large-scale-hy...
There isn't even any high res large touch screen KaiOS phone. I want to watch HD movies and read articles in comfort without scrolling all the time.
I don't love it either, but "why doesn't Google just ignore that regulation?" doesn't seem viable. (Companies only ignore laws when it's profitable, of course.)
And how is a 24-hour wwaiting period related to KYC, when it doesn't require a user to pass an ID check?
[0] https://testerbee.com/blog/google-play-developer-verificatio...
Concretely in my case, I read all the fdroid materials that were linked to from the fdroid pop-ups and they left me hanging, trying to understand what was actually happening. I finally looked it up, and what I found was a lot more clear and actionable than what was communicated by, for example, Fdroid. Obviously Google's motives are clear, but I had to work pretty hard to figure out what was going on.
This style of communication is what will will undo graphene and fdroid and all these other organizations because it's just not useful, professional or appealing.
Keep in mind they’re crippling devices. You’ve already paid for, it’s not like I’m gonna go to the store tomorrow and buy a new phone with significantly reduced functionality. Instead Google is reducing the functionality I already paid for.
I'd just turn off my phone before midnight, boot it into fastboot and reflash lineage 2 days later, missing the window for them to push anything. No gapps btw.
1. You own your device and can install anything you want on it (what we have today)
2. Google gently yanks you away from the simple workflows, leaving you with ADB or their 24 hour hoop to jump through. If you opt for the second, you get a choice between allowing 'unverified' installs for 7 days or indefinitely. Huh, that's weird, who would ever pick the 7 day option, right?
3. The dust settles and some time passes. Google decides that the indefinite option is just way too dangerous, the users are not safe if they are allowed to use this freedom. They'll just claim there's countless clueless grandmas getting entangled in multi-day-long scams that hinge on the sideloading feature, and they simply can't let them suffer so much. They will generously disable the 'indefinite' option.
4. 7 days may still be too much, maybe the sensible decision is to move to a 24 hour countdown per app. I mean, if you want it so badly, you have to work for it - that means you'll have more time to mull over the security of every single app you put on your phone.
5. Huh, for some reason it looks like almost no users are installing apps from outside Google Play anymore. We'll keep the feature on life support for a while, and then retire the legacy unverified installation workflow, to be replaced by a temporary limited permission for verified developers to briefly install their own in-development apps on their device. That ought to be enough.
This pathway for extinguishing features that are inconvenient for massive corporations isn't new. I really do not understand how everyone supporting Google's side here doesn't see this, and why they're so willing to wholeheartedly and without reservation believe them on matters of security where pushing one opinion also happens to conveniently align with their profit motive.
No matter what you do, it will never be as good as it once was. We've moved from a world where custom, 'hacker' type stuff could coexist with convenient apps and corporate or government services to a world where anything custom or unauthorized effectively doesn't exist, except for a few restrictive and mangled exceptions that require a lot of pain to get to and limit your device in many ways.
Nowadays it seems that there's dumbing down of everything. Don't let technology replace education and common sense.
We need a truly open-source os, everything else is going to be a patch over a bullet hole.
whats the way forward?
You can't just click a random apk in a website and install it. At least without the 24 hour wait workaround, done once per device.
Before you @ me, HN, I run GrapheneOS. I fully understand and practice "own your own hardware". Most people probably shouldn't, though, because they lack the technical ability / interest to do so safely, and throwing them to the wolves strikes me as ideology pushed to the point of foolishness.
Now, y'all can flame my ass.
Almost certainly that would reset this. Why would it not?
> What if I wipe data in play services?
No idea. Is this a thing people do?
> Will a future silent play services update conveniently break my p2p messaging app during a protest?
Google can already do that today.
If the legal system dictates that open = monopoly and closed = fair game, then you get dumb shit like this.
Probably one of the dumbest rulings in tech ever, but few people know about it. Basically set precedent to never share your platform if you don't want legal scrutiny.
Even with Android becoming much more closed, it's still more open than Apple.
Not true if one pays up ($99/yr), in which case the interval becomes one year. Also apps that sign and install other apps with one's cert exist.
But for most people, the existing flow to allow external sources is already too much. For other people to install my APKs, while possible, is a slow and painful procese. Add waiting 24 hours? As good as blocked.
...
30 cents out of every dollar, you say?
1771953671 | Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution | https://keepandroidopen.org/open-letter/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139765 | 381 comments
1776257256 | Keep Android Open | https://keepandroidopen.org/cta/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778274 | 69 comments
1777389660 | Your phone is about to stop being yours | https://keepandroidopen.org/en/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935853 | 910 comments
1778236465 | Keep Android Open | https://keepandroidopen.com/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48061201 | 3 comments
1788273664 | Why did the Android side loading lockdown change from Sept to January 2027? | https://keepandroidopen.org/faq/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522647
That's how it's done with domain names, with security advisories and disclosures, etc. That they don't do it for developers shows that it's about control and anti-competitive business behavior (preventing other app stores).
Will not apply if updates are blocked
Good to have old phones, i.e., not primary phone, where user can block updates
Some users may want a portable, pocket-sized computer that the user can reasonably control (old phone) in addition to one controlled by Google or Apple (primary phone)
Maybe think of it like an "A/B test". Primary phone with the update and old phone without the update
For some users, the "threat model" may be Google and the long list of its government, corporate and other partners
Maybe some users just want relief from data collection, surveillance and ads
Not every user is the same
Some (not all) users may be willing to sacrifice some alleged "security" provided by an ad services company (wtf) in exchange for more _user control_
This will not arrive through Android updates but through Google Play Services.
You can try to block Play Services using DNS trickery, but it's like whackamole. The only way to be guaranteed safe from this update is to run a ROM without Google services installed.
It's the user's phone. The user paid for it. The user pays for the internet connection. The phone belongs to the user not to Google. The user can control traffic to and from the phone if he so chooses
I have been blocking connections to Google servers, e.g., "updates", Google Play Services, and many, many others, on old phones for years. There are many ways to do it
For example, a local forward proxy works well; I run proxies on the phone and on the gateway
Blocking can also be done using only Android apps, e.g., Netguard, etc.
Two types of people will benefit: 1. the genuine & naive who want to help but don't make much progress; 2. those who attended Harvard.
https://linmob.net/my-setup-with-danctnix-archlinuxarm/ (2021)
I think what's interesting, and what our grandchildren will look back on, was how naive the early internet was. There was almost this sense of "the government is powerless" whether it be piracy or jailbreaking or casual death threats [8647 style] or who knows what else. Combined with also a sense that devices will always be exploitable, there's always a way around, resistance from government and corporations will always be futile.
> Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Android is owned by Google, so in all fairness they can do whatever they want, so they don't need anyone consent.
There is a very concerning amount of illegal apps/scams distributed through ads that I've casual users install somewhat banally with the aid of short walkthroughs.
Any sufficiently advanced user is barely affected by this, as the procedure is just complex enough to block average people from getting scammed/using illegal services unknowingly, but simple enough to barely be an inconvenience for anyone who cares enough and can go through it.
I believe this is usually referred to as "boiling the frog".
24h delay is not all of it, there's developer verification.
Any sources for this claim? I don't buy it.