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Comment by Isinlor | Hacker News Reader

Next year digital markets act will go in full power in EU. Google will have to allow alternative app stores on Google Play.

Right now Google does not allow alternative app stores like F-Droid (FOSS), Steam etc. on Google Play.

The important part is that it will be user-friendly install, instead of preinstalled app or hacky dev-like experience.

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No, they don't need to allow alternative stores on their store. They need to allow alternative stores on Android - which already exist (Galaxy Store, Amazon Store, F-Droid, et. al.)

They just need to give them fully equal status than Play Store (I think they promised this for Android 13, not sure what the state is.)

what would "fully equal status" mean? for as long as I can remember, as long as you give the store permission to install apps, it works basically the same?

I can only guess, but automatic updates maybe?

The installation process requires extra user intervention vs. Play store.

The big one was the fact that silently installing apps was a privileged permission only allowed to preloaded system apps (with good reason). This prevented 3rd party stores from background updating apps because you had to manually confirm each update via system dialog.

The API seems to have been added in Android 12 actually [1], but I'm not sure if app stores use it already.

[1]: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/P...

fdroid doesn't. They still have horrible UX for installing updates and it fails to install more than half of the time.

F-Droid mentions Aurora Droid as an option for people who are not content with the F-Droid UX.

That doesn't support it either.

> The big one was the fact that silently installing apps was a privileged permission only allowed to preloaded system apps (with good reason). This prevented 3rd party stores from background updating apps because you had to manually confirm each update via system dialog.

It's been a long time since I last looked at this, but not even Google Play installed apps silently.

IIRC, what Google Play did was to tell the Google Play servers that you wanted to install the app, and the Google Play servers sent a message through C2DM/GCM to a system service on your phone, which downloaded and installed the app. The same thing happened if you opened the Google Play site on your desktop browser, and told it to install an app on your phone.

Obviously, a third party store cannot tell the Google Play server to send that "install this APK" message to your phone; and even if they could, it would have to be one of the APKs available for download on the Google Play servers.

The "system service" you talk about is still part of Google Play Store package. What I'm talking about is an API on PackageManager level (part of OS/AOSP) and not inside Play Store.

The whole mechanism you describe is unrelated to the issue of installing user apps without confirmation for alternative stores.

> Google will have to allow alternative app stores on Google Play.

Play is a store. It's used on Android, which allows other stores, of which there are many.

But you can't install the store itself (e.g. fdroid) from Play Store at the moment

Ah right I see what you mean. That's a whole different can of worms.

It's not that complicated to download APK and install it. Most people don't download is because they don't trust other stores the way they trust Google. And Google could definitely make it much more harder to download F Droid in play store by presenting warnings(some of which are legitimate) or even not allowing it on search.

If Google will keep applying taxes on apps on Google Play then other companies will educate users that it's ok to install alternatives the same way it works on Windows with Steam, GOG Galaxy etc.

I think your “not that complicated” threshold is well past what most users are ok with.

>It's not that complicated to download APK and install it

It's not complicated to reset your windows password either, but there are entire careers dedicated to helping average people do it because not everyone is technically inclined.

I practically don't know anybody (except for tech literate guys) who doesn't install non-Play store apps because of security reasons. Also, average guy doesn't know about APK stuff.

If another app store is allowed, people will definitely download apps from there, though I believe percentage would be quite low.

I said due to trust, not due to security reason. Just like people are used to buying on Amazon even though google will literally show a cheaper place in first ad when you search the product.

Also, I think average guy knows how to install APK in Android. It's literally easier than installing Chrome on Windows, and 80% of windows web share usage is from chrome.

Play is a store. Amazon Appstore is a store.

I believing OP was suggesting Google will need to allow the latter to be available in the former, not just allow the latter to be installed on Android.

From the start google has allowed alternative app stores on android, samsung phones come with the samsung app store installed by default and there are many, for example f-droid you can install yourself.

Now they will be forced to allow them on Google Play directly with user-friendly install.

But not through the existing app store, you have to go through what google termed "side-loading" which was pushed to be seen as "very dangerous thing no one should ever do no matter what"

I owned 2 Samsungs and that wasn’t possible on any of them. Either it wasn’t “from the start”, or it wasn’t on all models, or it involved rooting the phone first, which voids the warranty, at which point I wouldn’t count that as “allowed”.

Looking forward to a new insidious workaround Google and Apple will use to limit the impact of this legislation.

EU Commission has quite extensive and nimble executive powers with regard to gatekeepers like Google and Apple to prevent that.

A simple workaround is region lock - follow the regulation for EU residents only.

That's fine for me as I'm in EU :) .

AFAIK this workaround did not work in case of GDPR so I doubt it will work in case of stores regulation. Basically figuring out who is or not EU resident is complicated and huge legal minifield.

are there alternative app stores on iOS?

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