Google views sideloading as their inconvenient but necessary antitrust escape valve, in my view. They don't want people using it, they want it as something to p

Google views sideloading as their inconvenient but necessary antitrust escape valve, in my view. They don't want people using it, they want it as something to point at and say "not guilty". Interesting however is the wording of an old version of the Android Market (old name before Play Store came about) developer agreement - the title of 4.5 is labelled "Non-Competition". I think that title (which has unsurprisingly disappeared from more recent versions) says it all. Sideloading was Google's attempt to avoid an antitrust battle in the early days of Android, as they could say "we are new, anyone can make a store". The trouble is the licensing agreements with OEMs contain all sorts of restrictions, some of which have probably become public over time. Perhaps more will emerge through the epic games lawsuit, as it seems they're going after the restrictions on OEMs. There's many of those they can request through disclosure if they don't have them already! Ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20150107232223/https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribution-agreement/archive.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150107232223/https://play.goog...