> One advantage of that, is that malicious users cannot be served a malicious update of an app that didn't go through Play Store. And the disadvantage of that

> One advantage of that, is that malicious users cannot be served a malicious update of an app that didn't go through Play Store. And the disadvantage of that is that it is almost impossible to patch APKs on your own without running into serious issues, even as root - particularly when the app you're trying to patch has shared permissions with other apps of the same developer.