9 ms·

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restr

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe. But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 17 betas. Google is quietly proceeding with the original lockdown. The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible.

microtonal 7mo ago
The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team: https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103732808311135 https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103...
- akdev1l 7mo ago
  You can’t really do that long-term as Google will change code that will not match however you are not enforcing this policy So at the very least you’d have to keep patches up to date. Long term divergence could be enough that’s it’s just a hard fork and/or Google changes so much that the maintainer can’t keep the patches working at the same pace I couldn’t read your link as it asks to join mastodon.social
  - buckle8017 7mo ago
    The patch set for graphene is substantial, this is a relatively minor change.
  - gizmo686 7mo ago
    All distributions involve maintaining patch sets. The question is what the marginal burden of this particular patch is.
  - rezonant 7mo ago
    Doesn't require me to sign in or create account...
    - akdev1l 7mo ago
      I had the mastodon app installed and it was doing that. After I uninstalled it opened in the browser just fine.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - izacus 7mo ago
    But that just sounds the big community demanding this has to put together a proper KDE-like team to maintain Android in the way they want instead of waiting on Google's code?
- cyberrock 7mo ago
  The enforcement mechanism is in Google Play Services, not AOSP. To laypeople the difference doesn't matter but to folks looking for alternatives it does, so the discussion is often muddied and imprecise. This is like when YouTube removed public dislike counts and it turned into "they're removing the dislike button!"
hbn 7mo ago
Who could Android be possibly recommended to at this point? I know iPhones aren't affordable for the layman in many countries. But for anyone with an option, why would you buy an Android? All the "customization" things I cared about when I was on Android are either doable on an iPhone now with better implementation, or something I don't care about. I was a die-hard until I went through enough cycles of Google deprecating and reinventing their apps and services every year, breaking my workflow/habits, that I got sick of them and moved to Apple everything. And all the changes I've seen since then are only making me happier I got out of the ecosystem when I did. Unlimited Google Photos backups with Pixels are gone, Google Play Music is gone, the free development/distribution environment is gone, etc. If people can't even develop for the thing without going through the Google process, they're really just a shitty iOS knockoff.
- bpye 7mo ago
  I switched back to Android in large part for KDE Connect. You can get continuity esque features that work with any desktop operating system. I also get to use real Firefox instead of a Safari wrapper. I still use as few Google services as possible, pretty much just Maps.
  - _factor 7mo ago
    KDE Connect works just fine on iOS.
    - bpye 7mo ago
      It "works" but it is significantly less useful. Notification mirroring doesn't work, you can't read/respond to text messages, it can't reliably run in the background. These are all due to limitations imposed by Apple.
      - 4nonverbal-alit 7mo ago
        Regarding notifications, both iOS and android doesn't support reading and responding to text messages. The feature works on android because of a workaround: apps create a global notification listener and they can also interact with notification - read UI contents and respond. I know it's still better than not having a workaround at all like in iOS. But just pointing out that Google probably never meant to let others access notification mirroring.
arcanemachiner 7mo ago
If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community. Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years.)
- spacebuffer 7mo ago
  For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.
  - chrneu 7mo ago
    It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.
    - paulryanrogers 7mo ago
      It's also high risk. I've bricked two phones doing it.
      - Onawa 7mo ago
        I've been flashing phones for over 2 decades and have never bricked a phone. How did you manage that?
        user3939382 7mo ago
        Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious?
good8675309 7mo ago
Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone
- iugtmkbdfil834 7mo ago
  I.. don't think it will happen. For several reasons too. It is not that I don't think Android will change substantially, but the following constraints suggest a different trajectory: - AI boom or bust will affect hardware availability - there is a push on its way to revamp phones into 'what comes next' -- see various versions of the same product that listens to you ( earing, ring, necklace ) - small LLMs allow for minimal hardware requirements for some tasks - anti-institutional sentiment seems to be driving some of the adoption
  - Joe_Cool 7mo ago
    I think adoption will hinge on whether existing Android apps will just run on it with something like waydroid/anbox or not. Gaming on Linux took off with Proton. Linux on phones might go the same path.
- codethief 7mo ago
  Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.
  - shevy-java 7mo ago
    This assumes that the mentioned systems are the only security considerations on a Linux system. Clearly this is not the case so I am unsure why you omit other security-related aspects of Linux here.
    - siddled 7mo ago
      Android, being based upon the Linux kernel, has all those and its own app permission system built on top. Linux on its own comes nowhere close to this.
retired 7mo ago
Good thing restricting side-loading isn't legal in the European Union! Not a problem here. Apple had to enable side-loading on their EU-based phones and so will Google if they restrict it.
- post-it 7mo ago
  Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.
  - shafyy 7mo ago
    My understanding is that how Apple is restricting the alternative app stores is also illegal in EU, so I don't thinkt this is the end of this story.
    - jajuuka 7mo ago
      It's almost two years and they are still doing it. So they are moving mighty slow if that is the case.
      - shafyy 7mo ago
        Yes, these things move slowly, but they do move =)
        jajuuka 7mo ago
        They have moved much faster on much more complex plans though. If this is a case of Apple breaking the law then surely they wouldn't need over two years to tell them to stop it? The EU regulations seem largely to be, you need to do X and you need to figure out how to comply by Y date. They aren't gently guiding these corporations to compliance. So I'm leaning more towards Apple is in compliance and the common perception is incorrect. Which is fairly common when it comes to laws and regulations of any country.
shevy-java 7mo ago
I like it, because more and more people see Google as what it is: a ruthless, selfish and extremely greedy mega-mega-corporation. The less we depend on it the better.
earth2mars 7mo ago
The only reason I was sticking to Android for years is this. And I think there is no moat for Android. I would rather switch to iOS if both platforms are same restrictive.
- singpolyma3 7mo ago
  You'll miss having a keyboard that works
  - cromka 7mo ago
    It'll be sorted in about 9 days.
- aryonoco 7mo ago
  I did this last year. Reluctantly. And using iOS still hurts. But it’s better than that Google crap. I developed my own Android ROMs from 2009-2011, complete with my own tuned kernel. I ran the local Android developers MeetUp group and evangelised Android development. When Honeycomb launched I helped OEMs test their beta firmware. For free. But as Google has become certified Evil, the direction of Android has been very clear. In practice I honestly can’t say it’s now any more open than iOS. Except it has a lot more avenues for Google to mine your data to sell ads. And the quality of third party apps on it is decidedly worse. I thought long and hard about getting a Linux phone. But I need a good camera on my phone to take random snaps of kids/pets/etc. And the Linux phones just aren’t there. I hate the shitty duopoly we have ended up with. But I now realise that the openness of x86 and pc as platform really was an accident of history.
flaburgan 7mo ago
>The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible. I have trouble understanding why this is a threat to AOSP distribution. I would have said quite the opposite actually, I don't see why they would not remove the verification and that's an incentive for people to use their project instead of Google Android.
pino83 7mo ago
Good news: You (as a community) can now finally wake up from your dreams and get some things right! It's really a shame that you always wait until you really get forced. Particularly in situations when every individual's inability has consequences for the others as well. I really gave up all ideas of a better world. With this community, the best you can hope is that the decay will be slow. So everyone who would describe himself/herself as a FOSS enthusiast, or at least a friend of a somewhat open system where the user has some actual rights beyond sole consumption, put some pressure towards having actually de-Googled systems. A system that mostly comes from Google, would not fit my definition of that term at all! Even if they removed some parts of it. It's an euphemism. And it's dangerous because you constantly get trapped by these euphemisms. Ever. Single. F'ing. Time.
spystath 7mo ago
There is an implicit shame in disgrace but faceless entities have no shame. They'll just put out another press release written in corporate newspeak by an LLM and move on withe the plans anyway. This is standard Google behaviour. They do it with Chrome, they do it with Android, they'll keep doing it with all their captive markets. I fear that in practice even having an "advanced flow" will make little difference as some applications will refuse to work if you have it enabled anyway (in the same vein if debugging is enabled, for example). Nothing about Android is open except the absolutely minimum amount of linux kernel that's required to boot the thing. Then it's blobs and restrictions all the way to the screen.
freakynit 7mo ago
Why does there seem to be a growing push to tie real-world identity to nearly everything we do online? The justification is almost always "safety". I know this trend has been developing for years, but over the past couple of years it feels like it's accelerated globally.
- jacooper 7mo ago
  There's strong political backing for it now.
- snerbles 7mo ago
  Online anonymity makes it harder for TPTB to punish dissidents.
- torben-friis 7mo ago
  I think people in power have realized the impact of misinformation campaigns. And to be fair, western countries have proved to have the resilience of a wet paper bag against foreign influence and private interests. I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here. A move back to the early 2000s internet would be the ideal middle ground, which requires separating social stuff from informational stuff, and both from engagement algorithms. I have no idea how we’re supposed to put that genie back in the bottle. And to be clear I’m not saying this as vouching for the current push, I hate it as well.
  - JoshTriplett 7mo ago
    > I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here. "just stop" is a good solution. Stop asking for ID, stop pushing for apps, just stop the general trend towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification . Yes, misinformation is a problem. Deanonymization is a bigger problem. If you can't say anything anonymously, it becomes much more difficult to fight entities bigger and more powerful than you.
    - torben-friis 7mo ago
      I agree, but that isn’t a good argument to offer to the entities bigger and more powerful than me. Governments and companies feel a pressing threat of a trump-like populist overtake in each country. They need the bots, fake socials and slop stopped yesterday. An abstract degradation of freedom of speech isn’t going to cause pause. There is a national security argument that I think is more likely to help, at least for non Americans. Do you want a foreign power to have control over your citizens phones being functional?

microtonal 7mo ago

The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team: https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103732808311135 https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103...

akdev1l 7mo ago
You can’t really do that long-term as Google will change code that will not match however you are not enforcing this policy So at the very least you’d have to keep patches up to date. Long term divergence could be enough that’s it’s just a hard fork and/or Google changes so much that the maintainer can’t keep the patches working at the same pace I couldn’t read your link as it asks to join mastodon.social
- buckle8017 7mo ago
  The patch set for graphene is substantial, this is a relatively minor change.
- gizmo686 7mo ago
  All distributions involve maintaining patch sets. The question is what the marginal burden of this particular patch is.
- rezonant 7mo ago
  Doesn't require me to sign in or create account...
  - akdev1l 7mo ago
    I had the mastodon app installed and it was doing that. After I uninstalled it opened in the browser just fine.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- izacus 7mo ago
  But that just sounds the big community demanding this has to put together a proper KDE-like team to maintain Android in the way they want instead of waiting on Google's code?
cyberrock 7mo ago
The enforcement mechanism is in Google Play Services, not AOSP. To laypeople the difference doesn't matter but to folks looking for alternatives it does, so the discussion is often muddied and imprecise. This is like when YouTube removed public dislike counts and it turned into "they're removing the dislike button!"

hbn 7mo ago

Who could Android be possibly recommended to at this point? I know iPhones aren't affordable for the layman in many countries. But for anyone with an option, why would you buy an Android? All the "customization" things I cared about when I was on Android are either doable on an iPhone now with better implementation, or something I don't care about. I was a die-hard until I went through enough cycles of Google deprecating and reinventing their apps and services every year, breaking my workflow/habits, that I got sick of them and moved to Apple everything. And all the changes I've seen since then are only making me happier I got out of the ecosystem when I did. Unlimited Google Photos backups with Pixels are gone, Google Play Music is gone, the free development/distribution environment is gone, etc. If people can't even develop for the thing without going through the Google process, they're really just a shitty iOS knockoff.

bpye 7mo ago
I switched back to Android in large part for KDE Connect. You can get continuity esque features that work with any desktop operating system. I also get to use real Firefox instead of a Safari wrapper. I still use as few Google services as possible, pretty much just Maps.
- _factor 7mo ago
  KDE Connect works just fine on iOS.
  - bpye 7mo ago
    It "works" but it is significantly less useful. Notification mirroring doesn't work, you can't read/respond to text messages, it can't reliably run in the background. These are all due to limitations imposed by Apple.
    - 4nonverbal-alit 7mo ago
      Regarding notifications, both iOS and android doesn't support reading and responding to text messages. The feature works on android because of a workaround: apps create a global notification listener and they can also interact with notification - read UI contents and respond. I know it's still better than not having a workaround at all like in iOS. But just pointing out that Google probably never meant to let others access notification mirroring.

arcanemachiner 7mo ago

If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community. Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years.)

spacebuffer 7mo ago
For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.
- chrneu 7mo ago
  It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.
  - paulryanrogers 7mo ago
    It's also high risk. I've bricked two phones doing it.
    - Onawa 7mo ago
      I've been flashing phones for over 2 decades and have never bricked a phone. How did you manage that?
      - user3939382 7mo ago
        Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious?

good8675309 7mo ago

Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone

iugtmkbdfil834 7mo ago
I.. don't think it will happen. For several reasons too. It is not that I don't think Android will change substantially, but the following constraints suggest a different trajectory: - AI boom or bust will affect hardware availability - there is a push on its way to revamp phones into 'what comes next' -- see various versions of the same product that listens to you ( earing, ring, necklace ) - small LLMs allow for minimal hardware requirements for some tasks - anti-institutional sentiment seems to be driving some of the adoption
- Joe_Cool 7mo ago
  I think adoption will hinge on whether existing Android apps will just run on it with something like waydroid/anbox or not. Gaming on Linux took off with Proton. Linux on phones might go the same path.
codethief 7mo ago
Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.
- shevy-java 7mo ago
  This assumes that the mentioned systems are the only security considerations on a Linux system. Clearly this is not the case so I am unsure why you omit other security-related aspects of Linux here.
  - siddled 7mo ago
    Android, being based upon the Linux kernel, has all those and its own app permission system built on top. Linux on its own comes nowhere close to this.

retired 7mo ago

Good thing restricting side-loading isn't legal in the European Union! Not a problem here. Apple had to enable side-loading on their EU-based phones and so will Google if they restrict it.

post-it 7mo ago
Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.
- shafyy 7mo ago
  My understanding is that how Apple is restricting the alternative app stores is also illegal in EU, so I don't thinkt this is the end of this story.
  - jajuuka 7mo ago
    It's almost two years and they are still doing it. So they are moving mighty slow if that is the case.
    - shafyy 7mo ago
      Yes, these things move slowly, but they do move =)
      - jajuuka 7mo ago
        They have moved much faster on much more complex plans though. If this is a case of Apple breaking the law then surely they wouldn't need over two years to tell them to stop it? The EU regulations seem largely to be, you need to do X and you need to figure out how to comply by Y date. They aren't gently guiding these corporations to compliance. So I'm leaning more towards Apple is in compliance and the common perception is incorrect. Which is fairly common when it comes to laws and regulations of any country.

shevy-java 7mo ago

I like it, because more and more people see Google as what it is: a ruthless, selfish and extremely greedy mega-mega-corporation. The less we depend on it the better.

earth2mars 7mo ago

The only reason I was sticking to Android for years is this. And I think there is no moat for Android. I would rather switch to iOS if both platforms are same restrictive.

singpolyma3 7mo ago
You'll miss having a keyboard that works
- cromka 7mo ago
  It'll be sorted in about 9 days.
aryonoco 7mo ago
I did this last year. Reluctantly. And using iOS still hurts. But it’s better than that Google crap. I developed my own Android ROMs from 2009-2011, complete with my own tuned kernel. I ran the local Android developers MeetUp group and evangelised Android development. When Honeycomb launched I helped OEMs test their beta firmware. For free. But as Google has become certified Evil, the direction of Android has been very clear. In practice I honestly can’t say it’s now any more open than iOS. Except it has a lot more avenues for Google to mine your data to sell ads. And the quality of third party apps on it is decidedly worse. I thought long and hard about getting a Linux phone. But I need a good camera on my phone to take random snaps of kids/pets/etc. And the Linux phones just aren’t there. I hate the shitty duopoly we have ended up with. But I now realise that the openness of x86 and pc as platform really was an accident of history.

flaburgan 7mo ago

>The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). If installing a basic APK eventually requires a Google-verified developer ID, maintaining a truly de-Googled mobile OS becomes nearly impossible. I have trouble understanding why this is a threat to AOSP distribution. I would have said quite the opposite actually, I don't see why they would not remove the verification and that's an incentive for people to use their project instead of Google Android.

pino83 7mo ago

Good news: You (as a community) can now finally wake up from your dreams and get some things right! It's really a shame that you always wait until you really get forced. Particularly in situations when every individual's inability has consequences for the others as well. I really gave up all ideas of a better world. With this community, the best you can hope is that the decay will be slow. So everyone who would describe himself/herself as a FOSS enthusiast, or at least a friend of a somewhat open system where the user has some actual rights beyond sole consumption, put some pressure towards having actually de-Googled systems. A system that mostly comes from Google, would not fit my definition of that term at all! Even if they removed some parts of it. It's an euphemism. And it's dangerous because you constantly get trapped by these euphemisms. Ever. Single. F'ing. Time.

spystath 7mo ago

There is an implicit shame in disgrace but faceless entities have no shame. They'll just put out another press release written in corporate newspeak by an LLM and move on withe the plans anyway. This is standard Google behaviour. They do it with Chrome, they do it with Android, they'll keep doing it with all their captive markets. I fear that in practice even having an "advanced flow" will make little difference as some applications will refuse to work if you have it enabled anyway (in the same vein if debugging is enabled, for example). Nothing about Android is open except the absolutely minimum amount of linux kernel that's required to boot the thing. Then it's blobs and restrictions all the way to the screen.

freakynit 7mo ago

Why does there seem to be a growing push to tie real-world identity to nearly everything we do online? The justification is almost always "safety". I know this trend has been developing for years, but over the past couple of years it feels like it's accelerated globally.

jacooper 7mo ago
There's strong political backing for it now.
snerbles 7mo ago
Online anonymity makes it harder for TPTB to punish dissidents.
torben-friis 7mo ago
I think people in power have realized the impact of misinformation campaigns. And to be fair, western countries have proved to have the resilience of a wet paper bag against foreign influence and private interests. I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here. A move back to the early 2000s internet would be the ideal middle ground, which requires separating social stuff from informational stuff, and both from engagement algorithms. I have no idea how we’re supposed to put that genie back in the bottle. And to be clear I’m not saying this as vouching for the current push, I hate it as well.
- JoshTriplett 7mo ago
  > I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here. "just stop" is a good solution. Stop asking for ID, stop pushing for apps, just stop the general trend towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification . Yes, misinformation is a problem. Deanonymization is a bigger problem. If you can't say anything anonymously, it becomes much more difficult to fight entities bigger and more powerful than you.
  - torben-friis 7mo ago
    I agree, but that isn’t a good argument to offer to the entities bigger and more powerful than me. Governments and companies feel a pressing threat of a trump-like populist overtake in each country. They need the bots, fake socials and slop stopped yesterday. An abstract degradation of freedom of speech isn’t going to cause pause. There is a national security argument that I think is more likely to help, at least for non Americans. Do you want a foreign power to have control over your citizens phones being functional?