The company says it is now developing an “advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn’t verified.” This installation flow will include safeguards to protect people who are being coerced into installing a dangerous app, or tricked by a scammer, along with “clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved.”
IIRC we already had to enable a setting and confirm a warning popup. What are they gonna do? Add more popups? A captcha-“puzzle”? Less easy to accept dialogs?
Honestly a less easy to accept dialog would go a long way.
Just make it require ADB. Iv had my grandfather fall victim to a crypto scam that got him to install a app on his phone.
As much as we hate it, google is the only one who has any power to prevent abuse of the stupid, elderly and gullible. Someone has too.
There is a line of going to far to protect people that just makes things worse for everyone. But the reality is, our freedom comes at the expense of others freedom.
Finding the balance is hard.
Boiling the frog
“side” loading is just normal loading for me. I have one single app from the google app store. (It’s cookie clicker 😂)
Even calling it side loading is an attempt to delegitimise the practice. To make it sound like you’re doing something dodgy by the side.
It’s just installing an app.
Nobody calls installing an app from outside the Microsoft store on their Windows PC “side loading”.
Likewise for Macs regarding their app store, or installing an app from outside your distro’s repository on Linux.
Do you use Fdroid or simply get apks online, like we all used to before these walled gardens?
I use fdroid whenever possible, but I do use Google Play for most everything else. I do have a few apps that I install via APK, but built-in updaters are so uncommon on Android apps that it’s kind of a pain to maintain.
Great, more hoops to jump thr… I mean… an “advanced flow”, for gaining the privilege of installing apps of your choosing
So about those linux phones…
Aaaaaaany day now… guys…?
(I have a pinephone and no, it is absolutely nowhere near ready)
My guess is that any good Linux phone experience would need greater funding from some company or foundation…(Valve please?)
That’s kind of a double edged sword though. Android got a foothold because a small scrappy unknown company in silicon valley brought them into the fold…
It’s not if it’s done right, android is problematic because it’s not a community project, it’s just a code dump.
case in point, the linux kernel itself
They won’t kill side loading (the fact we even call it side loading instead of simply installing software is a problem). They’ll just shoot it in the knees a little. No big deal.
They’ll be able to stop a group of less technically savvy people, who currently are sideloading, from using their phones the way they choose. Apparently that’s good enough for Google.
I bet you less than 1% of users are even aware and of that less than .1% can’t figure out what they need.
They already don’t let you use Google pay if you don’t give them control of your phone. This is just tightening the noose a little bit.
Credit card in your phone case, use your banks’ website, 95+% of people right there.
Most banks don’t allow payment through their apps anymore
This also doesn’t work for shared cards under one person’s name, which is my main use for this
People shouldn’t use google pay in the first place. All of these things being tied together by the same group is a problem in and of itself.
Would use something else if I had the choice
Don’t you have a physical card?
People shouldn’t use google
pay in the first place.
Push 3 degrees harder, relent 2 when there’s resistance.
Meaning, 3 steps ahead for them if there’s no resistance. 1 step ahead if there is.
Wait some time, repeat.
That is more the fault/worry of the financial sector and not G. The fact that they gave up this amount of leeway is shocking. Their risk tolerance is very low and giving G the ability to manage virtual cards and allow payments with them is huge in itself.
Even Privacy, which does part of the same thing/idea, still only works for some cards, doesn’t work at all for credit cards (last time I checked), and has been in the sector for a similar amount of time.
G had to lock down Pay to appease the financial sector’s risk management. Anything else was DOA.
I wonder what an alternate history where Google chose not to become evil would look like.
What if they had looked at Microsoft’s Palladium proposal and thought, as pretty much everyone outside institutional IT departments did that locked devices with remote attestation was a nightmare scenario best forgotten, refused to build it, and made an effort to prevent anyone else from doing so on top of Android? Safetynet didn’t appear until 5-6 years after Android launched to the public. What if it never did? Android already had enough momentum by that point I don’t think the financial sector could refuse to be on it no matter what risk management said.
Well, I kind of know what happened in that scenario… because it did. Until Pay, there was Wallet. The original Wallet, not the current one. Wallet had a physical and virtual prepaid debit card, that you would load up and manage in the app. I used it a few times (new tech woo), and distinctively remember ordering at a McDonald’s, the clerk announced the cost, I held my Nexus 7 to the new nfc pad, they started to say ‘uhh no you have to-’ and then a success beep, and their jaw dropped. They thought it was nuts, I told them in a few years ‘this will be everywhere’.
So before Pay, there was Wallet, and it’s own little sandbox of testing if anyone would use this. A couple years later the Wallet card discontinued, and Pay took its place.
A different Wallet/Pay implementation is a possible outcome, but I’m thinking of a bigger picture where Android phones are more like PCs: no non-unlockable bootloaders, no remote attestation anywhere, barriers to root detection at the OS level, third-party ROMs encouraged.
The early days of Android were like that. I wonder if things had developed along that path, would we have a paradise for power users? A security nightmare for mainstream users? Both? Neither?
Until Pay, there was Wallet. The original Wallet, not the current one.
Classic Google.
I remember wallet only working consistently at McDonald’s.
This framing still sucks. Google is blocking apps THEY don’t approve on YOUR phone.
Agreed. But one climb down means potentially more, as needed. 🤞🏻
Only if the protests continue with full force.
A “concession” to use your phone, and you need to give your address, phone number, and ID. Fuck off.
They must really hate ReVanced.
Oh, I bet. They probably hate GrayJay more though.
GrapheneOS is luckily out of their jurisdiction :)
They’re not killing sideloading, they’re just building the gallows and sharpening the axe.
The outrage doesn’t stop anything, it just makes them slow their plans and wait out the public outrage.
The company has confirmed that it is developing an “advanced flow” to let experienced users install apps from unverified developers
How about don’t change it at all, Google
This is from November, and is about the ‘student accounts’ thing which doesn’t at all help the central issue of being forced to make an account to distribute your app
“Starting in Brazil”
Not as much of a proactive people, from what I can see in person, but the “jeitinho brasileiro” hopefully will show ways to make Android programs without Google’s tools.
Are there any longstanding open source alternatives to Android OS?
LineageOS?
Lineage, Graphene, and /e/ OS are all forks I believe, not alternatives (since they are dependent on the main Android branch for some updates and feature implementations).
Linux phones don’t really have enough support for the necessary applications to be viable for most people, at least for now.
If Google continues to round the corners of their Google Play triangle icon, it’ll become a circle in a few years
