this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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They don’t police sideloading?
https://apnews.com/article/google-epic-games-antitrust-trial-android-app-store-dd6b26be7447b5ff8cc0d20a4d01b6b4
My takeaway from that article is they don't, and haven't.
The splash screen for installing a package not from the play store is there to protect the end user. Without it there would probably be a much worse unwanted software issue on android.
I've been "side loading" or just "installing" applications on my android devices since the nexus one, without the help of the play store.
That’s not what the lawsuit is about. Google made backdoor deals to pay developers to release on the play store instead of their own 3rd party app store. They were found at fault for anti-competitive behavior.
That's a pot calling a kettle black. Epic is doing the same thing with there store.
But they do freely allow it, grab an APK from F-Droid and install it.
You posed a question about Google policing sideloading, then posted an article that has nothing to do with google policing side loading.
🤷♂️
They don't. They discourage it on the consumer end, but that also has good safety reasons behind it. They go a little too far in pushing people to Play Store over other app stores, and require basically any phone with Google Services to have Play Store, but that's a different matter.
They've never tried to dictate rules on what sideloaders, both on the supplier and consumer side, can and can't do like Apple has.
The closest they've ever done to this is use Play Protect against apps like Lucky Patcher. And that's a piracy app that, among other things, patches other applications to do things like bypass Google's payment systems and disable ads.
Thats absolutely correct, around android 6, it got real annoying to install 3rd party apps, settings called it somthing like "install apps from places other than the google play store".
Later, it got more restrictive, ironically, making it a real security feature.
That article specifically mentions that Google doesn't restrict installing apps from sources other than their store.