| On a more general tone, does anti trust cover knowingly destroying communities and open source tools? All the problems from app store racket still applies such as the tax. And I am not saying android doesn't need a lot of those changes, it's just they break things without helping. There are many examples if you look around. 1. Disguised ads in search results (they have been making ads less obvious) - https://i.postimg.cc/h4V8TbqF/Screenshot-20200620-041823-Goo... Even if you search the exact name, it will bombard you with whoever is paying the most. 2. Google closed source their play billing library recently. Apps which use the library can't be put on fdroid. 3. At Google I/O 2018, Google introduced an alternative app distribution format called the Android App Bundle with the file extension .aab. This format requires giving a copy of your app’s signing key to Google. AABs are harder for users to manually sideload as they aren’t natively supported by Android’s package installer and must be unpacked and devs have to do more work to distribute on other platforms. 4. Google killing Termux with Android 10 and many others relying on the functionality by removing the perms to execute binaries. 5. Fdroid can't auto update because of restrictions by google. 6. Broke custom recoveries such as TWRP. 7. Irresponsible automated ban of anything covid. Surprisingly this doesn't or never affect popular apps. Must be because they whitelist them. 2] https://www.xda-developers.com/f-droid-android-apps-google-p... 3] https://www.xda-developers.com/google-play-billing-v3-app-bu... 4] https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An... 6] https://www.xda-developers.com/twrp-lead-explains-android-10... 7] https://9to5google.com/2020/05/19/podcast-addict-banned/ |
Microsoft hardware with Android, a decent update lifecycle, MS365, alternate store, MS billing APIs, etc. would make a compelling offering IMO. The only thing I think MS would screw up would be sideloading. They seem to be all in on the current code signing / trust system and it's absolute trash.
There are so many industries that have been turned into complete garbage by rent seekers that I feel like anything that doesn't absolutely screw developers and customers would be super successful. The problem is that we only have about 5 tech companies on the planet that are big enough to compete.