An Open Letter to Google regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Android
96 points by aoeu
96 points by aoeu
The Android Developer Verification program has been discussed in other threads within the past 6 months, but I thought this letter was interesting specifically because of the signatures of the EDRi and EFF. Both organizations are no strangers to litigation, but EDRi’s involvement suggests this could move from a policy complaint to a formal regulatory challenge in the EU.
Don't beg Google, beg the governments.
They're corrupt but at least there is some reason why they might want to listen to citizens. This letter to Google is just letting them know that they're likely to succeed in having the impact they wanted this change to have.
Open letters are not intended for their recipients, they are intended to let other people know that there is a broad objection to something the recipient is doing or planning.
Does this impact non-Google Android distributions? Such as LineageOS, eOS, and GrapheneOS?
can you run your "mandatory" (in the sense that the service is not accessible by other means) apps (like banking, insurance, package delivery, car/scooter sharing, public transportation etc.) on those? i doubt it.
here we are, we appear to have a widening fork between consumer infrastructure and general-purpose computing. maybe it is a good thing that this becomes explicit. we need now, as it is de facto impossible to use vital consumer services on a free computer, to finally discuss this.
Banking apps are an issue but I have been able to use Lyft, PayPal, and our local transit app on GrapheneOS. They mostly require Google services be installed but there are ways to minimize your exposure, if desired.
What do you think the chance is that it remains an option five years from now? What are the trends that affect this?
In the day-to-day, start carrying cash & don’t use businesses that don’t accept cash. It’s better for your privacy anyhow. Use banks/cards/crypto online & only as necessary.
I can run all of my mandatory apps just fine on GrapheneOS! I think one of the biggest (and theoretically easiest but probably not) steps is to get Google to admit and treat GrapheneOS as Play Store Secure or whatever it's called, as GrapheneOS has repeatedly called out how they far surpass the security requirements and mainstream vendors don't.
That way the mandatory apps of those who are less fortunate in their options than I am also work.
It depends on your market's location, for the services you've mentioned in my country almost all are available on GrapheneOS just fine.
I'm unsure of the issue here, given they have backtracked already on allowing users to 'opt out' of this through some new flow that allows them to install unsigned apps?
It's already pretty scary to enable sideloading and I suspect a tiny proportion of users sideload apps, so I don't see a major issue myself if you can opt out of that (even if it is a very scary flow)?
What am I missing here?
afaik if you know that the "some new flow" is actually acceptable and doesn't come with extra limitations you have insider information that nobody else has, because they haven't told us in detail what they actually intend to change.
We don't really know the details of this new flow.
And even then, putting hurdles on previously easy/er stuff can really be easily turned into boiling the frog. The harder you make something, the less people will try, even if it'd greatly benefit them, giving more ammo to Google to say "Look, nobody is using this feature! Who cares if we turn it off?"
There is no such new flow, is the problem. There have been a few vague statements about maybe making one. But there's been no movement to actually do it