For years, the possibility of installing applications outside the Play Store was one of the determining features of Android. It’s a simple function – you download an APK file, press Install and you’ve finished.
From next year, Android will block the applications for high -verified developer key. If you think it seems familiar, you are right: this is exactly the type of control that Apple has always exercised on iOS. And if Google will act like Apple, I could also buy an iPhone.
Google says it is security
But less freedom
Google announcement Frame this as security upgrade. Quite fair, because malicious software in terms of breeding can empty your bank accounts or take other unpleasant measures. Under the new rules, any developer distributing applications outside the Play Store must check its identity via a new Android developer console.
Yes, it is separated from the existing Play Store system, which means even more skipping recording hoops. Google says they will not really check what these applications do or how they work.
But here is the real problem: the launch of the key exists precisely because some legitimate applications cannot or not go through the official channels of Google. The advertising blockers that have reduced Google’s income, modified applications like YouTube have toured, developer tools in sanctioned countries or applications that help follow government activities – all of this is based on touchbags to exist.
Although security assistance verification also means that Google will have a complete recording of each developer distributing Android applications. This centralized type of control makes it much easier to limit applications that compete with Google’s services or policies.
Why the key outfit always counts for me
More than alternative applications
I do not remove the applications because I try to hack software or install malware. I do it because some of the most useful Android applications are simply not allowed on the Play Store.
Take Adguard, for example. It is an advertising blocker at the system scale that works brilliantly, but Google will not allow it in its store because the company prohibits the applications that interfere with the announcements. Without breeding, I would have fewer options here.
Then there is the problem of the pastime developer. I sometimes build small applications for my own use. Nothing extraordinary; Just a few public services that make my life easier. As part of this new program, I should register just to install my own creations on my own device.
F-DroidThe open source application repository could face an even greater challenge. Currently, FD-Droid built and signs applications itself; Individual developers do not do so. This new verification system could complicate the way F-Droid signs and distributes these applications.
What happens to applications like Revanch?
The tools that Google does not want you to have
Applications like Revanced are the elephants of the part here. For those who are not familiar, it is a modified version of YouTube that blocks the announcements and adds Google features refuses to offer. There are in a legal gray area by modifying an application that you have already installed, but Google does not like it very much for obvious reasons.
This places the developers of these applications in a difficult situation: they can record and risk legal exposure, or remain anonymous and lose access to most Android users. None of the options seem particularly promising for the future of these applications, and above all, for users who have more to lose.
The same question applies to dozens of other applications that exist in gray areas. These include applications that block follow -up, delete announcements from other applications or provide features that compete with Google’s services. These developers often work anonymously for a good reason. Force them to register and they will stop developing for Android instead.
Does that bring me closer to iOS?
When Android stops being Android
The freedom to install what I want to keep me on Android despite the more polite experience of the iPhone. This is the same reason why I use a Windows PC. My wife uses an iPhone. My parents and sisters use iPhones; So do most of my close friends.
The temptation to drop Android in favor of an iPhone becomes more difficult to resist each year. But I stayed because Android respected my choice to use my device as I wanted, and I don’t care about the green bubble.
If Google continues this change, what is me on Android? I haven’t thematic my phone for years and I use the action launcher. Of course, my Galaxy Z Flip 6 is an interesting equipment that you cannot get Apple, but the main aspect keeping me here is that I can install applications I want. Remove this freedom, and even the fresh folding screen may not be enough.
Apple built an enclosed garden and owned it from the first day. Google has marketed Android as an open alternative, but each year it locks the platform a little more. This verification system is only the last step in this direction.
One year to decide
The question is not to know if open mobile computing is dying – it is whether android users will notice or care. Most probably won’t do it. But for those of us who bought Android specifically for its opening, this change makes the future of the platform fairly clear.
For the moment, I will continue to use my Android phone and the applications that are worth it. But if the ruin stops working and F-Droid becomes unusable, the choice becomes simpler: stay with an increasingly locked Android, or switch to iPhone and stop being the strange.
