[xrd]

Two thoughts:

I got a little caught up in the argument about clipboard apps suddenly being broken as if there was no thought put into the impact it would have. Clipboard apps on Android are currently very dangerous since an app can access the clipboard without asking for permission so the user can unknowingly share anything in the clipboard with malicious apps. That's insane and Google is right to fix this even if it breaks things for well behaved apps. There is a lot of solid information in this article but starting with that argument set a poor tone.

Second, makes you wonder if Google as an organization wants to push you towards web apps / PWAs. Google has always seemed to think that getting people to abandon the app model benefits them and hurts Apple and maybe these changes are in search of that end result.

[gbl08ma]

I agree with you on the clipboard thing, but as with every other API that gives access to sensitive information, they could have put it behind a permission prompt. It wouldn't make the situation worse than it is now, and wouldn't annoy users and developers nearly as much.

[xrd]

What you are suggesting seems so obvious that I'm assuming they couldn't do this. Android Permissions on older targets essentially "grandfathers" in apps since older versions didn't need to write code to ask for each permissions at runtime (they asked for the entire set of permissions at install time). I imagine there was no way Google could effectively permit apps targeting older versions to run safely inside the new OS. So, they just took the hard path for developers and are forcing those that really need the permission to update their apps. I'd be unhappy too, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised, and I'd only be furious if I was doing something bad and couldn't anymore. There is going to be the new permission READ_CLIPBOARD_IN_BACKGROUND which will give me whatever I need, and let users know I'm using it, so if I'm willing to write the code, I have everything I need.