AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link
github.com813 points by hexa555 13 hours ago
813 points by hexa555 13 hours ago
Not Google's first rodeo. They pulled the same move in 2019: https://www.phoronix.com/news/WireGuard-Ejected-Play-Store
This is why software should not be subjected to an "app store" type distribution system, where a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes.
You can install from other stores (AnkiDroid is on F-Droid, for example), or from direct file download on Android already. The problem is rather thay most users just use the store preinstalled on their phone as part of Google's deal with OEMs to bundle Google Play Services. So either you follow Google's rules, or you lose all the users who don't want to leave the walled garden, even though they can.
When do we stop this instinctive response of "well you can still do it in an only slightly convoluted way" everytime a corporate does something bad.
Windows added ads - well you can disable them, if you don't like it.
Chrome brought up mv3 - well you can still use mv2, it is only optional.
Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit
Android moving everything to playstore - there's always FDroid.
How many of these are still true and for how long?
If someone's country is a dictatorship, it doesn't help to tell them that there are 100 other democratic countries, just move. Not everyone can emigrate or want to emigrate for any number of reasons.
Imo if you compare what Google does to the one other mobile OS manufacturer with any users, claiming Google should be fined is something like the cop pulling you over for going 8 over the speed limit while Apple is doing triple digits and just ran two people over.
'Why not both' is an argument, but clear as day what Apple does is worse. There's no alternative.
Your reasoning shows why it's so much harder to fix a duopoly than to fix a monopoly. If there was no Apple then Google would get its comeuppance. If there was no Google then Apple would get its comeuppance. But because we have both Google and Apple, we can't punish either.
The mathematician in me wants to solve the problem of the duopoly by first reducing it to a monopoly, which we have known solutions for.
We both agree that there is a speed limit and it needs to be adhered to, regardless of who it is.
The problem with Google is that it may have started at 8 over the limit, but it advertised itself as sticking to the limit but always hovered slightly above it pushing the boundaries. This has skewed our perception into believing that Google's was acceptable and we have been gradually raising our threshold itself to a dangerous level.
Now Google is not too far behind Apple that it can't catch up.
Give it up. Stop defending your position when it's been pointed out that you are holding the two companies to two different standards. It's all right to admit you were wrong and learn something, even on the internet.
How do you know what standard he is holding Apple to? This thread is about Google and Apple was not mentioned.
> it's been pointed out that you are holding the two companies to two different standards.
Stop making things up. Apple is garbage, too. This isn't an Apple thread.
On the contrary, defending Google by bringing up Apple in this context is about as cut and dry as whataboutism gets. What Google is doing is wrong, full stop. Anything else is in addition to and also irrelevant.
> 'Why not both' is an argument, but clear as day what Apple does is worse. There's no alternative.
'Just start somewhere, anywhere, please' is another argument.
Ironically, Apple allows alternate app stores in the EU now, while Google is moving to disallow them everywhere.
I don't think Google is moving to disallow them, it's more that the EU said that it's fine for Apple to still own app notarization / developer verification even outside of Apple's app store. Google saw this and said, cool, we'll add that to Android too so we can also get our (undeserved) cut outside of the Play Store. I can install F-Droid or anything else, but if they dont submit papers to Google, I get a big scary warning when I install it (I get the same scary warning if a developer distributes apps through F-Droid, but doesn't verify with Google, which is ridiculous too). On iOS if I don't submit to Apple I cant do anything.
It all sucks, and I'm not saying this is a good thing. But Google and Apple are both trying to position themselves as not having monopolies on store fronts, while still forcing notarization and verification to run through them independent of the store being used. And the EU seems fine with this for some insane reason. Google isn't trying to be worse than Apple, they're trying to match Apple.
Google are trying to match Apple's worst behaviour.
Next will be USA deciding that it's illegal to use the new Chinese offerings that will pop up to work around Google/Apple shittiness, because unconstitutional market manipulation goes hand-in-hand with USA's Russian-style oligarchy.
How long before Linux is added to the USA regime list of software that 'shows someone is a terrorist'.
> Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit
old.reddit is now locked behind login as well.
There's a workaround if you want it enough.
I noticed that reddit was setting a use_redesign (I might have the name slightly wrong) cookie when I explicitly visited the old.reddit domain, and this caused old reddit to persist. Since I do occasionally want to use the new site for image posts and the like, I set up a bookmarklet to set/unset that cookie on command.
I've since found that setting this cookie bypasses the old.reddit login page, allowing me to view the old site while not logged in. No idea how long that will last though.
The simple workaround to most of these walls is to create an account with your email address and phone number.
Which is not a workaround, but giving in. And it gets increasingly difficult to create an account without giving them personal data.
When did this start? I didn't even realize at first because I use Redlib.
The amount of time I've spend to turn off news and ads in Windows is absurd. Just to be turned on in a new update.
And the menacing messages of installed something from F-Droid. My mother would never do it. Even my programmers colleagues usually don't do it.
I actually think the menacing messages are on point but should apply to play store apps as well. Most of the people I know are incredibly cavalier about running mystery software from unfamiliar developers on by far the most sensitive device that they own.
While I agree with your point, conflating the effort to install apps outside of the Google Play Store with the effort to immigrate to a different country is wildly incomparable.
The "convoluted" way is/was the default in the absence of a monopolist app store. Before centralised app stores, users downloaded or bought boxed software ad-hoc and installed it on their computers from installation archives, just like you can install apps from APK files on Android. If you banned Google from preloading their app store, isn't that what we would revert to?
The goal is not to prevent a Google monopoly. The goal is to have competition to prevent Google abusing its monopoly to lock down users.
There is Samsung Galaxy store.There is Xiaomi store.There was Amazon app store which failed to gain traction as it was not pre-installed but had decent number of apps. This is even before we get to open stores like F-droid.
Now their viability is a question in the long term, if Google has complete discretion over what is allowed.
Google doesn't have complete discretion. On Samsung phones, Samsung's discretion overrides Google's. On Xiaomi phones, Xiaomi's discretion overrides Google's.
Not really. Google sets strict boundaries for smartphone brands on what they can do software-wise. For instance, iirc, shipping the phone primarily with a non-Google alternative ROM means you won't get any play services on them, even if you want to have a secondary version with a standard Google ROM.
Google has essentially full control. Because they own security updates. Because banking apps already now often do not work without Google services. Etc. Etc.
It is a monopoly (regarding Android app developers), and is increasingly exploiting that to cash in.
On my Nokia (featurephone) you don't need to install apps, you just run them.
Actually old reddit doesn’t work that way anymore lol you must login or use crappy reddit, which is exactly to your point though! They will just keep making it harder and harder until you simply can’t, but by then so a few people will be “opting in/out” that they’ll argue nobody wants the ability to toggle that anyway.
I think the old reddit redirect extension gets around this somehow, that has worked for me lately (occasionally with some toggling of the extension). Although maybe it's best to just use less reddit tbh
Not anymore :-(
But it's a good thing, actually because: - when reddit is good it's way to addictive - reddit has become nearly as bad as most other social media sites
So if they force me to use an account, I'll finally be able to kick the habit ;-)
Reddit has been akin to Facebook since around 2022.
Make that 'since forever'. But there used to be a lot of insightful discussion inbetween the facebook-like parts. (Maybe it was the same on facebook, I wouldn't know because I never had a facebook account and you can't access the site without it.)
But I deleted my account (or at least randomized my password) somewhere in 2016 or so, so apparently 10 years ago I decided I wanted out. But I'm still reading it at least as much as HN. So fingers crossed they screw up badly enough this time :-D
You don't always need an extension to use old.reddit.com, it's an actual setting if you're logged in.
The real problem is that old.reddit.com and its ecosystem are all becoming worse and worse. Just off the top of my head, things like image galleries, message notifications, RemindMe bot, RES, /r/random, etc all have various problems and breakage.
I resigned as a mod after the API shitshow and am so glad I did. It’s a terrible site. I wind up there every month or two from friends or looking something up, it’s hard to see how much of a cesspool it is when you’re so invested in it and up close.
I use redlib https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib and librediret instead.
https://srinagar.nic.in/notice/immediate-suspension-of-virtu...
They banned "VPN"
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-vpn-ban-in-k...
Then came arrests.
https://www.medianama.com/2026/01/223-jammu-kashmir-vpn-ban-...
Street level checks. Police literally stop you roadside and check your phone for VPN.
This is happening in 2026. RIGHT NOW.
I talked to some officials and "oh you know what happened in Delhi blasts? They were using signal. If we had only caught them before".
sometimes people share a problem and want solutions or workarounds
other times people share a problem and just want to feel validated ("yeah that sucks dude")
it sounds like you wanted the 2nd but got the 1st
There are solutions and then there are workarounds. what we see are workarounds, not solutions.
Even in software, you can only patch so many workarounds without fixing the issue. Eventually fatigue sets in or we run out of workarounds and just publish the bug as "expected behavior" don't we?
I don't want the workarounds to distract from the need for a proper fix.
Yeah, not for much longer though: https://keepandroidopen.org/
Thanks for sharing.
Everyone is speed running towards a future where you need a permit to write software.
Try to run a binary that doesn’t have the right cert( or whatever it’s called on Windows) and you get a bunch of warnings.
Even if Android is open , normal people will only use the App Store. I can imagine China forcing Apple to allow 3rd party installations of software one day .
The EU did something where to my knowledge Apple still gets a cut of each sale.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
Not just warnings.
I literally can't run non signed software in the job-provided computer even if I compile it myself.
Wow. The click the build number a bunch of times is already onerous enough. Now we're going to have to wait 24 hours to spin up a new development device?
Google is making it increasingly difficult to freely install software from app stores that they don't control and tax. Quoting https://keepandroidopen.org :
> Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
> Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
> Google's "escape hatch" is a trap door
>> Wait 24 hours
>> Pick "allow temporarily" (7 days) or "allow indefinitely
Geez. I don't like what they're doing either but this fear-mongering is not helping your cause. So the "trap door" here is just that you can't buy a phone and immediately start loading apps from unverified developers onto it until 24h have passed? Of all the hills we could be dying on, that's the one we're picking?
- the "24 hours" is Google's first formulation of plausible deniability. They've likely done testing to hone that number to find a sweet spot.
- the "24 hours" is enforced by remotely-run code, meaning Google remains in control of it and can unilaterally alter how this works, any time they feel like.
Imagine you went to the shops, and found that one shop, while it had the goods on display, and could totally just let you pick them up and buy them, was required by the shop next door to make you go away and come back no sooner than 24 hours later. Meanwhile, the shop next door is right there, and it's open, and it has no such restriction.
On what planet do you think anyone other than the most dedicated of dedicated people would choose the shop that requires waiting a whole day to use it when the alternative has no such restriction?
> unverified developers
The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google. That's the whole fucking point. Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
> On what planet do you think anyone other than the most dedicated of dedicated people would choose the shop that requires waiting a whole day to use it when the alternative has no such restriction?
I have no clue what you're referring to or worried about here, could you clarify? Are you worried Android is going to lose power users to iPhone? What are the alternative shops you're referring to here? We're not buying pastries.
> The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google.
"Unverified" in my comment was a shorthand for "unverified by Google", not an insult.
> Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
The complain about that? Rather than wasting time complaining about the 24h wait?
I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer). The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it. (And yes, it could have been chosen for plausible deniability.) Is your actual problem the wait itself, or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
> What are the alternative shops you're referring to here?
In this analogy, the alternative shop that is preventing you from buying stuff from its competitors without a 24 hour wait is the Play Store monopoly.
> but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
Then in this hypothetical world where there were a free market for verifiers rather than a single, monopolistic choice, I would choose another alternative verifier that doesn't make me wait 24 hours, or no verifier at all.
> Are you worried Android is going to lose power users to iPhone? What are the alternative shops you're referring to here? We're not buying pastries.
Are you 13 years old? Who in their right mind would even care that "all the power users" went and bought iPhones? Are thoughts like this keeping you up at night?
> I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
It's your imagination that's failing; we don't want ANY verifier at all, whatsoever. Nobody should be able to reach into my phone OS and have a say regarding what I can install or not.
> The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it.
"Security mechanism" to protect WHO from WHAT, exactly? And please don't repeat the drivel about scams that Google's pushing, we all know those are excuses, "It's for the CHILDREEEENNNN!!!!" sure.
> or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
So you DO know what's going on! In that case I have no idea why you're arguing in favor of having a gate placed in front of our [personal, owned] phones to regulate what we do with our own devices.
> So the "trap door" here is just that you can't buy a phone and immediately start loading apps
I'm sorry, I thought I owned the phone I bought, and had a right to decide what software I want on it whenever I want.
It's still surprising to me how fast we lost ownership norms, and most seem satisfied with renting the right to be a sort of peasant.
Unless you own your own cell carrier and built towers across your country, you can’t own a phone.
Sure you can, the same way you can own a lamp without owning the power plant.
About that... you might be interested that private property ownership in general is the result of similar kinds of onerous and exploitative processes. Anthropologists and historians have done a bunch of research on this for a while, and one of the interesting narrative texts about this is Engels'
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (based on Lewis Herny Morgan's work) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-fami...
I agree wholeheartedly, but you can already unlock and root your phone and install whatever you want. This is not that battle. Mind you, I don't like either of these, but they're very different in nature.
And if I want to run the stock OS I paid for, with apps of my choice? It feels like a bait and switch to lock down the OS like this after you've sold the device.
This is the stock OS you paid for. It's beholden to Google and subject to their updates as it always was. You can either flash a different OS entirely, or even break their ability to update it before the change rolls out, if that's what you want. What I think you really want is to pick and choose what updates you get, which I would love too, but that's neither here nor there.
> fear-mongering is not helping your cause
So we started with an OS (when Google still needed to gain market share and goodwill) which was opensource. Now Google is no longer developing Android source code in the open and decreasing the "opensourcing" to a couple of source drops each year (the interval has been decreased multiple times). Google Play was introduced (basically clamping down the app store ecosystem) and from there Google has only made it harder to get around Google Play. Introducing things like phone attestation. Supposedly a security measure, yet for some reason a Samsung phone which hasn't had an update in 4 years still passes basic level attestation. And now Google is yet again making it harder to get around the Play store.
And for some reason you seem to think it is reasonable to assume it is going to stop here?
> And for some reason you seem to think it is reasonable to assume it is going to stop here?
I really don't. That is, actually, my entire point: people are going to roll their eyes at this right now. And then you're going to lack/lose the supporters you'll need when things really get bad.
Things are really bad already on Android. Most bootloaders are locked, Google prevents you to use the very few unlocked ones through the (legally questionable) Play Integrity. AOSP is basically dead (it doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays, can it still be called a phone?) and now they are further locking direct installs
> Things are really bad already on Android. Most bootloaders are locked, Google prevents you to use the very few unlocked ones through the (legally questionable) Play Integrity. AOSP is basically dead
This feels like complaining about the color of the bikeshed, me saying you should save your complaints for when things get really bad, and you replying "things are really bad already, there is a rotten carcass in there and the roof leaks."
Okay, so let's keep complaining about the color then.
What would be "really bad" for you? Non-google Android is dead outside of China and you can't realistically distribute software either without a Google stamp.
I don't see much difference between Android and iOS in terms of openness nowadays personally.