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Comment by linuxhansl | Hacker News Reader

What Google is doing is shameful. One of the promises of Android was being more open than the restrictive Apple ecosystem.

Now that they reached penetration they do the switch - under the guise of security.

Just let me do with my hardware what I want to do it. Let it be my responsibility to install whatever I want (and stop calling it "side-loading", as if I am doing something shady from the "side").

We need to resist this! Alas, from the broader response it seems that most people just do not care.

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Epic games sued both Apple and Google for anti-competitive behavior.

Apple was found not guilty.

Google was found anti-competitive.

In the appeal, Google asked the judge why Apple wasn't anti-comptitive and the judge told them that Apple wasn't anti-competitive because there were no competitors on their platform to compete with.

Google lost the appeal, an inflection point in tech was created, and Google wondered why the hell they tried being open when xbox, playstation, nintendo, apple, all get to do whatever they want on their closed platform.

It's incredible how little coverage that ruling gets despite how damning and detrimental to tech it's implications are.

It's not just shameful, it's stupid. Freedom was the whole point of tolerating the shittiness of Android. If they get rid of that, then there is no point, and I'll just buy an iPhone instead. If I must be in a walled garden, I'll choose the better kept garden, and it sure as hell isn't Google's.

you think it's shitty, but it's a personal opinion that you're phrasing as some kind of widely accepted view

be sure that it's not, lots of people actually PREFER Android

Pragmatically speaking, I doubt that the percentage of users currently choosing Android over iOS for this reason would add up to even 1%. Android dominates worldwide by and large because of cost, and unless Apple pulls another Neo this shall remain regardless of how locked down they make it.

An older iPhone is already better than most new cheaper Android phones.

Many people disagree.

I like Android a lot better. And I really, really like the fact that Android is open source, so that 1) I can read the sources and 2) projects like GrapheneOS can do it right.

Apple does not remotely allow that.

The whole point of remote attestation is to ban projects like GrapheneOS which "do it right". If you install such things, you are "tampering" with the phone, it becomes an "untrusted" device and you are banned from digital society, completely ostracized.

It's not your phone, it's the corporation's phone, they're only generously allowing you to use it, on their terms. If you install GrapheneOS, or any other system that you gives you ownership of the machine, from the bank's perspective you turn into a fraudster, from the video game's perspective you turn into a cheater, etc.

But that's different: if your bank is stupid (most banks are, let's be honest), it's not the fault of Android.

Sure, remote attestation allows your bank to do it, but at the end of the day, it's your bank that pulls the trigger, not Google.

This is worse than Apple. With Apple you knew where you stood day 1.

Ah so the Do No Evil wasn't serious after all?! /s

It was indeed! And Google removed it in 2018.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

and it is still there

https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...

Section "2. Competition Laws"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitru...

"Don't be evil" would be some evil company's motto in like Lego Movie 3

It's "Do More Evil" now.

If you go back far enough, the original iPhone didn’t even promise to give you the ability to install apps.

Its worse in a different way.

I mean when people complained about Apple, the standard reply was "if you don't like Apple use Android,it's open! ".

Now when people complain about Android doing the same, the answer is how is it wrong if Google does it, when Apple has been doing this forever.

lol my god the apple shills are out in full force. this is implementing a tiny fraction of control over probably less than 1% of android users (hint for the hn crowd: you dont represent real people and you need to remember that) in an effort to stop a very real problem that far far far more than the people affected by this face. yet they are worse than apple who has been doing this since day one to 100% of users. you’re an unserious person

I just made a comment. Whether or not you consider it serious or not is for you to decide.

AFAIK you can still install any random APK but the process will require enabling developer mode and one time 24 hour wait period. But the problem is many stupid Apps check that developer mode is on and refuse to work.

How long before they take that option away?

An FDroid desktop client that adb installs APKs would actually be lovely. I pretty much exclusively use FDroid, but I gotta say I unfortunately find all their frontends to be rather buggy and with very little user feedback when things break (repo updates are hard to observe, downloads hang, updates mysteriously fail)

I feel you about the frontends being buggy. Right now I've settled with Droid-ify[1] for doing my F-Droid browsing.

[1] https://droidify.app/

Droidify sometimes does a weird thing when installing apps:

1. Ensure Droidify is not running. 2. Launch it. 3. Tell it to install or update to an app. 4. Receive an Android system prompt to approve the install/update. 5. Approve it. 6. Tell Droidify to install or update another app. 7. Reveive a system prompt to approve the action of step #3 again. 8. Approve it. 9. Receive system prompt to approve step #6. 10. Repeat #6 through #9 for more apps.

Workaround: Do steps #1 through #5.

Foxy Droid doesn't have this problem, but won't auto-download updates for you.

> many stupid Apps check that developer mode is on and refuse to work

Do you have some examples? I have developer mode enabled and have never seen any apps complaining (and I have used a lot of different banking apps).

Almost all banking apps in my country do this, absolutely ridiculous on their behalf obviously

I'm not aware of any apps that check for developer mode, that's mainly root.

I've never encountered this or read about it. I believe you could toggle developer mode off after install.

> We need to resist this!

I agree. What do you suggest? How can we contribute to the resistance?

This started with phishing, poor people being tricked to install apps that then drained their bank accounts. So to resist, maybe focus on that evil? Better international cooperation, better prosecution?

We can't even get India and Turkey sanctioned for evading the anti-Russian sanctions... good luck holding them accountable for the scam callcenters.

> This started with phishing

It didn't.

Phishing is just a pretext. Google didn't care about Phishing for the first 20 years of Android. Why do they now? Because it serves as argument to close their platform a little more (which is a trend that has been going on for years).

I do think it's about Google trying to squeeze profits out of Android, but is there more direct evidence of this? Cause I always have to wonder if it's something else like KYC.

Of course Google generally tries to squeeze profits out of… whatever it does, but eh, by closing something? Google is the company that makes a million in profit from the openness of the web in the time it takes me to write this paragraph, why would that company think that closing something improves its competitive stance?

By imposing Google Play, rather than letting people use Android without any of Google's ecosystem.

About Google squeezing profits out of everything, yes but that's a kinda new thing, mostly starting 2023. They did their first mass layoffs ever, then started cutting costs and milking products more. I'm not saying they were better before or something, it's just that it was growth time before. That was also the same time they started talking about locking down Android, and even WEI.

I think they care now because of pressure from the governments of the countries involved.

And perhaps because ten and twenty years ago, the sums stolen were small. Now they're in the billions.

How do you explain that all the scammers I've entertained used apps that are already on the store?

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

The attack in question doesn't use apps on the store, or even any attempt to get them on the store. There are also other attacks, but the one that prompted this change uses social engineering to get people to tap the build number seven times, sideload something and get a keylogger that then picked up their banking details and used them. Several governments raised the issue, Google acted. (The actions are to slow down the tap-seven-times process, so it becomes harder for the scammers to keep their victims fooled until the keylogger is installed, and also to tweak the timings, so the scammers can't outrun the app-banning process.)

If you haven't had your bank account drained, the scammers you met were different ones. (And I'm sorry that you've been scammed.)

But it is suspicious they want to defend vs attacks that don't happen while doing absolutely nothing to stop the attacks that do happen. Seems like security isn't a goal here?

(I didn't get scammed, I sometimes am curious on what the scam is so i lead them on a bit)

Are you in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore or Thailand? Those were the four worst-affected countries IIRC. Although I seen to remember Ecuador or Bolivia as well?

(They do something about other scams too. There was another thing they published recently, I didn't pay attention since no side effect of that concerned me, something to do with caller ID.)

Russia is also under heavy attack of phone scammers. Govt using that to shut down and ban messengers, lol, how convinient.

While Europe doing chatcontrol is very free and democratic?

Govts pretend to protect while taking your civil rights, nothing new under the moon.

or how about don't allow government and banks and telcos to use abusive apps to provide essential services?

those people fall for this because for everything poor people do, they need an app that is provided by sleazy vendors and that require tons of permission, and face scan and what not. they were primed so those business could save in operating costs.

that's the problem. won't solve it with slightly less sleazy vendors.

All scams attempt I received from "hot asian ladies" involved putting my savings in apps that are already on the google app store.

The scam apps are already in there. Please stop repeating google's propaganda.

Not much one can do I fear...

Install f-droid and all kinds of 3rd part apps now.

Install GrapheneOS. (I'm guilty of not having that done that,yet :( )

Sign the petition (https://keepandroidopen.org/).

Wow, the link to the petition is buried halfway down the page. How is this not part of the first visible content?

Fwiw it's also linked in the article, so it's not exactly a surprise :)

Raise it at whatever level we can.

I've seen more outrage on HN posts about license changes than those related to this. I mean we are in the midst of one of the biggest rug pull of our lifetime and the response was not even remotely proportional. I wish it was a atleast a fraction of what it was during the SOPA act.

Not even businesses that could be hurt by entrenching Google more in the mobile space are acknowledging the issue.

That makes me think may be all the outrage at the SOPA time was probably "promoted" because it aligned with their commercial interests or may be Google is all too powerful and too deeply entrenched that nobody wants to upset them.

If you are in the EU, send a message to the DMA Team. Be polite, explain how Google is using its oligopoly power to shut out competing app stores and applications that can be installed outside the Play Store. Explain how it affects you.

An app becoming unavailable through remote attestation? New recaptcha? Document every case and send an e-mail to the DMA team.

Stop using Android.

We don't have a lot of choices right now, especially regarding banking apps :'(

Your bank doesn't have a website?

GrapheneOS is good.

I'm sure there's plenty of Google employees on here, some quite high up.

Push back against these types of decisions internally. Rally your coworkers against them.

And if you're brave enough, talk to a journalist, or pull a mini-Snowden. Lord knows the company has secrets. I bet there's at least one email chain from some exec bragging about how this policy will squash Revanced, ad-blockers, etc.

I guarantee you that there are zero email chains from execs bragging about a policy that'll block the dozens of users running Revanced.

Opt out of the duopoly by getting a freedom Linux phone like FLX1s from FuriLabs, or the Mecha Comet with cellular modem. Or if you're technical, you can install postmarketOS on a Fairphone 5 or OnePlus 6. Sendero Linux sells refurbished ones with pmOS preloaded.

Shame isn’t an applicable concept for a corporation.

Maybe we need an economic system where it is. Shame should come packaged with legal personhood.

Better to pass state bills modifying all of that state’s articles of incorporation to compel adherence to B-corp standards.

Shame has ceased to be an applicable concept for anyone “important” enough to get free media attention.

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