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Do you think Google will ever just outright ban non-official app installations (aka: "Sideloading")? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 week ago by throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works to c/android@lemmy.world
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[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 31 points 1 week ago

Google outright lets you unlock your bootloader on Pixels, and relock it with your custom keys, and even tells you how to do all that in the docs. You lose Play Integrity certification which is where things are getting a bit messy.

But for that you have to blame Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, a lot of banks, a lot of games for using what is basically DRM for apps. It's the developers that want those features, so you can't mod their APKs and take the ads out, make sure you download the official version from Google Play because dumb users getting scammed and all that stuff.

I run LineageOS on my phone, I'm not doing anything whatsoever to hide it, and pretty much everything works perfectly except Google Pay. Which I guess is fair game, I hate it but there's a reasonable argument to be made there.

The rest is the same DRM woes I deal with on Linux, I value my rights and freedoms more than running an app.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

But for that you have to blame Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, a lot of banks, a lot of games for using what is basically DRM for apps.

I don't think those entities had the leverage to force Google to add remote attestation to Android. Safetynet didn't show up until 2014 when Android was already established enough that not being on Android wasn't a realistic option for any of them.

Instead, I think it was mainly a move by Google to make it so any OEM shipping a fork of Android without Google's blessing would have angry users because some of their apps wouldn't run.

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 1 points 1 week ago

Google bought Widevine in 2010, so in my opinion they were already concerned about big corp's interests above the users well before. I think SafetyNet is the natural evolution of that.

I think SafetyNet came with Google Pay for contactless payments, most likely at the request of the banks. They had to work with the banks for that, that's when they got the leverage. If they didn't they'd just go partner with Samsung instead, who already had Knox, and I did see Samsung Pay on my phone before Google Pay was available at all.

They also had to increasingly deal with shitty root detection libraries that were getting popular and excluding legitimate users because the latest Android changed things enough it looked modded to the apps. They probably saw it as a lesser evil to just take it in their hands.

You don't need that much leverage to put enough pressure that there's enough demands for a feature for the feature to get added. Android was dealing with a lot of fragmentation, piracy and quality problems already, Google needed people to see Android as not just the shitty budget option, they wanted to compete with the iPhone proper.

The entheusiast market only gets you so far. You need entheusiast buy-in at first, but then you have to pivot to end user "premium" experience, which is why brands like OnePlus eventually turn their back to the users that propped the company up. Regular users would rather pick the walled garden than the open world if it means their apps work better in the walled garden. The walled garden is a better experience for the average moron.

[-] Geodad@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Why did you choose Lineage over Graphene?

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 3 points 1 week ago

Because I have a OnePlus.

[-] Thelonius@feddit.uk 1 points 1 week ago

Which model - if you don't mind my asking? I managed to get my old Samsung A21s working *almost" perfectly with LineageOS.

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 1 points 1 week ago

It's a OnePlus 8T, but I think any OnePlus before I think the OnePlus 11 have excellent custom ROM support.

AFAIK I got lucky and the 8T is the last model from their "being nice to developers" era. OnePlus was born originally to be developer friendly, it was based on CyanogenMod out of the box, they even sent phones to developers.

Mine launched with OxygenOS 11, and then OOS12 was completely rebuilt on Oppo's ColorOS and they threw everything out the window. Took them forever to drop sources, and it just went downhill from there.

[-] semperverus@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

After the Apple ruling basically forcing them to allow side loading, I doubt google would even be able to.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The harder they push, the more it incentivises someone else to sell actual open source hardware for profit.

[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 5 points 1 week ago

We can keep dreaming, I guess. But no, it doesn't, because the big players aren't making that possible. In the literal sense. That would be easy on a x86, but not with arm.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I think the Chinese will do it with RISC-V, or Europe will demand it independently.

We're on the last nodes for fabs. The era of exponential growth is over. It is inevitable that a major shift in hardware longevity and serviceability will happen now. Stuff will also get much more expensive because volume is not needed or possible in the cycle to pay back the node investments.

[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 week ago

I must admit I don't know enough about RISC-V performance. How's it with battery life? That's the one reason why no (mass-produced) phone or tablet will ever be made with an x86, so unless RISC-V is on-par (or better) with arm, it won't succeed.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

ARM is an older Reduced Instruction Set Computing out of Berkeley too. There are not a lot of differences here. x86 could even be better. American companies are mostly run by incompetent misers that extract value through exploitation instead of innovation on the edge and future. Intel has crashed and burned because it failed to keep pace with competition. Like much of the newer x86 stuff is RISC-like wrappers on CISC instructions under the hood, to loosely quote others at places like Linux Plumbers conference talks.

ARM costs a fortune in royalties. RISC-V removes those royalties and creates an entire ecosystem for companies to independently sell their own IP blocks instead of places like Intel using this space for manipulative exploitation through vendor lock in. If China invests in RISC-V, it will antiquate the entire West within 5-10 years time, similar to what they did with electric vehicles and western privateer pirate capitalist incompetence.

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago

Like much of the newer x86 stuff is RISC-like wrappers on CISC instructions under the hood

I think it's actually the opposite. The actual execution units tend to be more RISC-like but the "public" interfaces are CISC to allow backwards compatibility. Otherwise, they would have to publish new developer docs for every microcode update or generational change.

Not necessarily a bad strategy but, definitely results in greater complexity over time to translate between the "external" and "internal" architecture and also results in challenged in really tuning the interfacing between hardware and software because of the abstraction layer.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

I don't love the term "sideloading". It sounds like something more nerdy and less normal that just installing software from a source of the user's choice.

No, I don't think it's likely Google will try to prevent it. That would violate the DMA in the EU, and several other jurisdictions have moved toward forcing Apple to allow software installation outside its app store. Between that and antitrust lawsuits in the USA, I think it's very unlikely Google wants to attract more scrutiny from regulators.

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

It has definitely been a goal. How far they'll get with legislators against them, I dunno. But it's what Pinchai and the people in control wanted because they think it's part of what made Apple powerful

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

I don't foresee Google as in a hardware/phone supplier company ever doing that. The chance of monopoly due to other clauses are too high.

Being said, I do foresee them introducing a way in Android to restrict sideloading completely, so it imitates how Apple has their environment. However, I don't foresee it becoming super popular, especially with how hard the EU is pushing for people to have more freedom with their devices.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 week ago

Probably not. If Google could survive the Amazon App Store, it doesn't have a reason to restrict sideloading now.

[-] Fedditor385@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

It's a legal trend now to force enable users to sideload so I doubt Google wants to pull back on one thing that they are not being sued over.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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