The fact that there's no technical way to enforce these restrictions means that the companies that benefit from them have to pitch their arguments to lawmakers, not customers. If you have something that *works*, you use it in your sales pitch, like Signal, whose actual, working security is a big part of its appeal to users.

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If you have something that *doesn't work*, you use it in your *lobbying* pitch, like Apple, who justify their 30% ripoff app tax - which they can only charge because it's a felony to reverse-engineer your iPhone so you can use a different app store - by telling lawmakers that locking down their platform is essential to the security and privacy of iPhone owners:

pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/you…

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Apple and Google have a dupology over mobile computing. Both companies use legal tactics to lock users into getting their apps from the companies' own app stores, where they take 30 cents out of every dollar you spend, and where it's against the rules to include any payment methods other than Google/Apple's own payment systems.

This is a massive racket. It lets the companies extract *hundreds of billions of dollars* in rents.

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This drives up costs for users and drives down profits for suppliers. It lets the duoply structure the entire mobile economy, acting as de facto market regulators. For example, the fact that Apple/Google exempt Uber and Lyft from the 30% app tax means that they - and they alone - can provide competitive ride-hailing services.

But though both companies extract the 30% app tax, they use very different mechanisms to maintain their lock on their users and on app makers.

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Apple uses digital locks, which lets it invoke IP law to criminalize anyone who reverse-engineers its systems and provides an easy way to install a better app store.

Google, on the other hand, uses a wide variety of contractual tactics to maintain its control, arm-twisting Android device makers and carriers into bundling its app store with every device, often with a locked bootloader that prevents users from adding new app stores after they pay for their devices.

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But despite this, Google has always claimed that Android is the "open" alternative to the Apple "ecosystem," principally on the strength that you can "sideload" an app. "Sideload" is a weird euphemism that the mobile duopoly came up with; it means "installing software without our permission," which we used to just call "installing software" (because you don't need a manufacturer's permission to install software on your computer).

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Now, Google has pulled a Darth Vader, changing the deal after the fact. They've announced that henceforth, you will only be able to sideload apps that come from developers who pay to be validated by Google and certified as good eggs. This has got people *really* angry, and justifiably so.

Last week, the repair hero Louis Rossmann posted a *scorching* video excoriating Google for the change:

youtube.com/watch?v=QBEKlIV_70…

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Google: 'Your $1000 phone needs our permission to install apps now'". Android users are screwed

https://consumerrights.wiki/index.php?title=Android_Developer_Verification

^YouTube

In the video, Rossmann - who is now running an anti-enshittification group called Fulu - reminds us that our mobile devices aren't *phones*, they're *computers* and urges us not to use the term "sideloading," because that's conceding that there's something about the fact that this computer can fit in your pocket that means that you shouldn't be able to, you know, just install software.

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Rossmann thinks that this is a cash grab, and he's right - partially. He thinks that this is a way for Google to make money from forcing developers to join its certification program.

But that's just small potatoes. The *real* cash grab is the hundreds of billions of dollars that Google stands to lose if we switch to third-party app stores and choke off the app tax.

24/

That is an issue that is *very much* on Google's mind right now, because Google lost a brutal antitrust case brought by Epic Games, makers of Fortnite:

pluralistic.net/2023/12/12/im-…

Epic's suit contended that Google had violated antitrust law by creating exclusivity deal with carriers and device makers that locked Android users into Google's app store, which meant that Epic had to surrender 30% of its mobile earnings to Google.

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Google lost that case - badly. It turns out that judges don't like it when you deliberately destroy evidence:

legaldive.com/news/deleted-mes…

They say that when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging, but Google can't put down the shovel. After the court ordered Google to open up its app store, the company just *ignored the order*, which is a thing that judges hate even more than destroying evidence:

justice.gov/atr/case/epic-game…

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Deleted messages bedeviled Google in its loss to Epic

The judge in the antitrust case reportedly told jurors to assume the search giant was hiding unfavorable communications by allowing internal messages to delete automatically. 

^{Robert Freedman (Legal Dive)}

So it was that last month, Google found itself with just *two weeks* to comply with the open app store order, *or else*:

theverge.com/news/717440/googl…

Google was ordered to make it possible to install new app stores *as apps*, so you could go into Google Play, search for a different app store, and, with a single click, install it on your phone, and switch to getting your apps from that store, rather than Google's.

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Google has just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, it admits in emergency filing

Google is fighting back against Epic’s big win that could change the Play Store forever.

^{Sean Hollister (The Verge)}

*That's* what's behind Google's new ban on "sideloading": this is a form of malicious compliance with the court orders stemming from its losses to Epic Games. In fact, it's not even malicious *compliance* - it's malicious *noncompliance*, a move that so obviously fails to satisfy the court order that I think it's only a matter of time until Google gets hit with fines so large that they'll actually affect Google's operations.

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