Its wild that they say this is to prevent people from getting scammed, meanwhile there is a ton of shit in the Play store that steals peoples info, mines crypto in the background or pops up ads every 4 seconds. But yea, this is for everyone’s safety…
Why are you arguing with their obviously smoke and mirrors pr when it’s apparent this move has nothing to do with this line of reasoning?
Phones should be getting more open not closed off.
Unfortunately, less than 1% of people will even notice.
We should buy Linux phones not android ones… But consumers prefer them for some reasons… Afaik simulating apks should be trivial
Uncertainty. People don’t have the money to spend on a phone they’re not certain will work for them for a few years.
Go fuck yourself Google, stop making everything worse!
supported app stores
EU Gatekeeper investigation when? And will it matter, after it’s established fact? Merely cost of doing business?
Apparently there will be a way to disable this crap: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html?m=1
Still fuck Google, but at least there’s a way to opt-out.
For now
giving external developers the opportunity to pay $25 and verify their identities
Extortion too
Having been in the app store development community for a decade, this isn’t honestly the WORST thing. So much malware gets pushed now it’s a fucking gha-tto. This isn’t the worst thing to combat, though I believe there should be a FREE tier for Open Source or otherwise community-driven apps to be released on with zero barriers - AGAIN, oenisn game sort of verification which could be cheap, reliable and FREE.
I see a lot more malware and apps from bad actors on the Google Play Store than I do on F-droid.
For me the worst part is giving Google a phone number and copy of id document. Not a problem with companies, but for individuals it is huge.
What is oenisn? Misspelled Genshin? Open-ish? Leninism? Bosnian? Penis?
Onanism?
Hey people who rally against the iPhone being closed off - where is your open phone system now?
And make no mistake, this is the beginning of the tightening of the grip, not the end.
Dork
where is your open phone system now
You should honestly check with your ISP if the URL won’t resolve for you
