Only a few months ago, Google announced it was going to require that all Android applications – even those installed outside of the Play Store – had to be verified. This led to a massive backlash, and it seems our protests and complaints have had effect: the company announced a change in plans today, and will, in fact, not require certification for installing applications outside of the Play Store.
Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn’t verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren’t tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. We are gathering early feedback on the design of this feature now and will share more details in the coming months.
↫ Matthew Forsythe Director at the Android Developers Blog
While this is great news, I’m still concerned this is only temporary. Companies like Google have a tendency to announce some draconian measure to test the waters, walk it back in response to backlash, only to then reintroduce it through some sneaky backdoor a year later when nobody’s looking. Installing whatever we want on the devices we own should be a protected right, not something graciously afforded to us by our corporate overlords.
If you think this is the end of this story, you’re a fool.
This is great news, but I’m still not re-enabling auto updates on my Pixel, just in case.
Great news, I was really afraid they might go ahead with this.
I sometimes wonder if PCs were invented today, if we’d still have the freedom to install our own OSes.
I’m not fully satisfied with the openness of Android, but I’m glad we at least have this.
I’m grateful Google is keeping this part open, at their expense of maintaining a more complicated security model. I really doubt the backlash would have been felt financially, most Android users really don’t care about this.
cheemosabe,
Yeah, I for one am very confident that if computers were invented today without being grandfathered into past norms, then there would only be walled gardens going forward. ChromeOS is very restrictive already. MacOS has all but crossed that line, Windows tried with metro and faced severe backlash for trying to deprecate “legacy applications”.
Wow, it’s good that google are backing off. but what changed? Obviously one didn’t need to see the feedback to know that turning android into a walled garden would generate severe backlash from android’s FOSS fans. Pretending not to foresee this is equivalent to admitting one is out of touch. I wonder if google’s commitment and subsequent backing down from such an unpopular change was done intentionally to get the public to expect the worst and then to appease us by delivering lessor restrictions and being happy for it.
This probably means alternatives app stores will face more red tape, but stop short of fully locking down android. I wonder where they’re going to draw the line…
1) Warnings/hoops when granting apps install privileges (including fdroid/firefox/etc).
2) Warnings/hoops each time a 3rd party apk is installed/updated through a 3rd party source.
3) Warnings/hoops each time a 3rd party apk is launched
I am totally ok with #1 (within reason).
#2 could get frustrating depending on what google does, but it could also be ok if done “tastefully”.
#3 is totally obnoxious and will make it painfully obvious that 3rd party & FOSS apps are reduced to 2nd class citizens on android. I’m hoping android doesn’t turn into #3 whereby users who side-load 3rd party software would be continually punished for doing so.