This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
For a long time I thought side loading was something special because it didn't say "installing software", so it must be some very special procedure that is required for mobile devices because of limitations or requirements with the hardware, right?
Yeah no, it was just a made up marketing term to push people away from installing their own software on their own devices
Fuck all big tech companies
This is such an overwhelming power grab in line with all the other crap they are currently pushing like disabling Manifest V2. The US urgently needs to ramp up their antitrust legislation, or else - if you extrapolate the current trajectories - they might soon be in a position where the US government has to do what google says and not the other way around
Remember when Apple were supposed to be the bad guys and Google/Android were “one of us”?
Marketing at its best....
What's going on? Why does it feel like every megacorporation have become completely openly anti-consumer? Yes, companies have always been shady and doing everything for profit, but at least they did it subtly and backtracked as soon as the backlash came. Now they're just shamelessly force feeding us spyware and "digital-only licenses revokable at any time".
I think theres two aspects to it
The first feeds into the second, once your competitor moves against consumer interests, C suites are/perceive they are then under pressure to match peers, else fall behind.
Screwing over customers is baked into Capitalism, even more so with the current scale and concentration of a handful of business operating in a weak regulatory environment.
GOOGLE is the malware.
Is this something we can opt out of, like how we can for Play Protect?
At first Google does plan to offer something called "advanced flow" that will let you install what you want. But this doesn't address the chilling effect for developers (some are just getting out of Android rather than registering and paying Google), or the censorship power it hands to Google to make "undesirable" apps harder to obtain and install. And there's no guarantee they won't just withdraw "advanced flow" one day.
https://developer.android.com//developer-verification/guides/faq#advanced-flow
The best way to avoid it is by installing an OS that doesn't include the developer verification component.
AFAIK you can only avoid it by using a custom ROM like GrapheneOS
I've been meaning to switch forever now...
My phone doesn't have any custom ROM support yet, so I guess I'm screwed? I love F-Droid, but this missive amounts to just ragebait for people who don't have Pixel devices.
Buy a phone that lineage os support then. Way more options than pixels. Pretty cheap used, you just have to accept one from a few years ago. and make sure that any required bootloader unlock from oem can still be done.
I'm all set then.
Best way is to not include it in the first place by using another ROM. If that's not an option, you can always remove it via root. It may also be possible to use ADB/Shizuku to get rid of it, but Google could add checks to prevent ADB from removing it. Then again apps installed via ADB aren't subject to verification.
You can buy a DeGoogled Android from Fairphone or Murena. Or if you have a Pixel, you can install grapheneos.
Or leave Android altogether and get a Linux phone. You'll have more control but it won't be as slick.
The implementation about to be done is actually just another smaller step to trying to be completely locked down.
In the same way you have to go and allow developer options to install apks outside of the play store now, this new thing will take you a couple more clicks to enable it and have a one time 24 hour waiting period before you can install whatever you want.
If we define malware as it is defined here, windows defender is malware.
What's the difference between malware and windows?
Malware is well maintained by its developers.
It might as well be if you're trying to do something it doesn't like. I created the registry entry in my VM and it still keeps turning itself back on.
Adb won't work to disable/remove ADV?
