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Comment by Rotdhizon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MBCook in an earlier version of this post

>> "It wouldn’t surprise me if google did this as a sort of backhanded way of saying “see what happens when you don’t use our App Store?“

I don't disagree with Googles decision here. Epic is being incredibly reckless with their bypassing the play store.

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While it'd be good for Android to have an option to trust a certain source once rather than leaving "unknown sources" open all the time, I'm glad companies are bypassing the Play Store. One company shouldn't be able to dictate the terms for all software distribution on a certain OS. That's not the way it's ever been on the desktop, and I don't want it to become the new norm in computing.

Why? These same people who download Fortnkte use desktops and download applications from the internet all the time.

The Play Store is full of malware. The claim you are safer with it is marketing FUD that makes Google billions of dollars. Google runs a relatively poor malware scanner that is industry-worst (see below), and its easy for people to make fake listings on it that look legitimate to the untrained eye, since anyone can submit there. (Meanwhile, the only game you can install from Fortnite.com is official.)

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/mobile-devices/

The Play Store has plenty of malware in it already! I'd prefer a feature where one can download and whitelist apps (from any source) and have other things blocked.

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