Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
www.theverge.com
Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/26302348
But third party stores are already allowed and supported on Android?
"Allowed and supported" is something different then "its possible". The article mentions some points that seemingly haven't been "supported" in the past:
Thanks Mr. Epic Judge
WTF, they can rule Google can't offer perks for exclusivity, but epic does that shit with it's game store.
So they will have the same judgement for apple right?? And not the same bullshit excuse that since it's even more locked down it's okay for them to do it?
This is all about the Play Store though, it has literally nothing to do with competing stores. I use F-Droid today and there are no restrictions from Google about what apps I can install through that store, whether I can pay for apps through that store (some apps have donation buttons inside), etc. There's nothing stopping Epic from distributing their own app store like F-Droid does even before this decision.
So I really don't understand what "cracking open Android" means here. All that seems to be happening is that Google is restricted from certain actions within its own store, which is absolutely fine by me (I don't use the Play Store), but I don't see any actual changes to Android or third-party app stores.
The closest is this one:
But Samsung already has its own app store, no? So is there any actual evidence that this was ever a thing?
They should place these restrictions on Apple, not Google, because Apple is the one doing all of this nonsense. Yeah, Google should be reigned in a bit, but they're really not the problem here.
The difference here from my understanding of what I read was that you could now open the Google Play Store and type "fdroid" and the fdroid app could be installed with the single install button.
Yea that's exactly it, no more side loading needed.
It'll be "allowed and supported" when e.g. you can download F-Droid from the Play Store instead of having to side-load it.
But doesn't that tie third party stores to the play store more?
Did you know that if you use the "transfer data from my old phone to the new phone" thing, only the apps installed from Google Play will be carried over? That is, FDroid apps and their data will be lost.
To be honest even getting data back from an older backup in your same device sucks, since I rooted my phone and got Swift Backup I got one Android issue ticked off (iOS handles the backups way better, now I am looking to customize my lock screen like in iOS, what a crazy world we live isn't it?).