[AnonymousPlanet]

Android is losing a unique selling point. This will have an impact on what a techie may recommend to a non-techie in the future, because everything is beige now.

I have the feeling Google has given up on using nerds as beachheads. The market is saturated enough and they don't need us anymore to do grass roots spreading of their products. It's the same with Youtube. As long as there were enough people who were unencumbered by ads because of their ad block and kept spreading links, the importance of Youtube was growing. After market saturation that vehicle isn't necessary anymore and they can squeeze them out.

[echelon]

This is unacceptable.

Google needs to be broken up. Apple too.

The lack of antitrust enforcement is a clown show.

We have no choice in the most important computing category in the world. It's a duopoly and they have everyone in straightjackets - consumers, companies, competitors, governments, ...

A huge percentage of the world's thoughts and economy flow through mobile. And two companies own it.

Ma Bell was nothing compared to this.

[gizmo686]

Breaking up Google will not help in this particular case. The problem is entirely within the Android unit; and would still be present even if Android were to be split off into it's own company.

It certainly seems like there is problematic behavior in the restrictions Google puts on OEMs that want to use Android (or, more specifically, play services) on their devices. However, I think it would take a different enforcement mechanism to address that.

[Palmik]

Disabling the ability to install arbitrary apps, like ReVanced, etc. benefits other parts of Alphabet.

In general, making anti consumer decisions is also easier when you know you can fall back on income from other units.

[spwa4]

Then why does Google make so few anti-consumer decisions? I mean, compare Google with Facebook. Surely we can agree Google is the better behaved of those two.

Apple only allows software on their macbooks and mac mini, and every release of MacOS it's more locked down. Everything else, from iPhone to the watch, is 100% locked down. Likewise, every version of Windows tries, again and again and again, to lock down programs that can be run. People absolutely don't accept it, but they do try (remember when they tried to bury the ability to run unverified apps behind a price hike?)

I'd at least give it a shot to simply appeal to Google on the justification they give. After all, the blogpost ... It is very strange for Google to do what they do in that blogpost, don't you think?

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...

"In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees ..."

"Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs praising it for providing a “balanced approach” that ..."

"Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sees it as a “positive and proactive measure” that aligns ..."

"Developer’s Alliance have called this a “critical step” for ..."

And it's easy to come up with other government requirements, like the DMA (yes, ironically) and ChatControl that require vendors are able to disable apps.

Clearly there is more than a little government pressure on Google to do this, including US and EU lobby groups (Developer's Alliance). Clearly Google is unwilling or unable to resist government pressure to allow governments to control which apps get to run ... Has anyone even asked these groups why they push for this?

[disgruntledphd2]

> I mean, compare Google with Facebook. Surely we can agree Google is the better behaved of those two.

I'm not sure I agree, particularly with respect to their core businesses. Like Google basically own all parts of the ad stack and use that dominance to compete unfairly against basically everyone else, causing them to appear to be a better service. There was even an anti-trust case about it (up for sentencing at the moment, here's hoping for a breakup).

Facebook have certainly done a bunch of nefarious stuff, but Google is just a more useful product to the people who come here (and I agree with this), so they get more of a pass.

[Palmik]

I have no doubt that there are strong external forces that are pressuring Google to do this. The fact that Google also benefits from it makes it less likely for them to put up much of fight, don't you think?

[spwa4]

That's a defeatist attitude. You could just as well say the opposite that Google fundamentally is a multinational company. That means to some extent it has to fight governments to create a flat market they can operate in, just by nature of what they are.

To say nothing of the fact that many governments would extend control over Google's services until nothing allowed is worth doing anymore (for example Pakistan has demonstrated many times they'd love to kill Youtube, as apparently French children's movies insult some sort of prophet, which apparently justifies blocking the whole thing)

And third many governments are adversarial towards one another. Which means Google just can't comply. India probably tries to threaten Google into stopping services in Pakistan. But while the India-Pakistan relationship regularly results in killings, nearly all governments are adversarial to some extent and will try to threaten any multinational into attacking other countries.

At best Google can give in to government pressure very slowly, because when that control gets strong enough governments would certainly use it to kill off Google.

[echelon]

A smartphone is essential to operate in the modern world. Facebook is not necessary at all.

Google and Apple are holding the entire world hostage.

I can't even order food at half the restaurants I visit any more without a Google or Apple device. They're all using smart phone QR code menus. It's absurd.

Imagine what happens when they're the only way to pay. When they're the only form of government ID.

Do we really want these devices to be locked down and not owned by us? This much responsibility should be a business liability imposed by the governments of the world, not unlimited permission to tax and coerce without impunity.

Imagine if your government was as free as your smartphone. We wouldn't have elections. We'd have no freedom, no peace of mind, forever renters. Bad choices would be imposed upon us as defaults. The government would make us more dependent upon them. If we had a business, we'd be taxed 30%, told we couldn't have a relationship with the customer, made to jump through frequent hoops, deal with constant friction, have to pay protection racket money to avoid ads, have everything we do monitored and controlled, be subject to takedown whenever and for whatever reason, not be allowed to issue updates or use our own technology, have the government themselves compete with us and look at our data...

The governments of the world need to end this.

[spwa4]

> Do we really want these devices to be locked down and not owned by us?

Locked down: no. But Google does not want them locked down. That has never been how Google operated (even now switching search engines, moving away from Google's core business, is trivial on any device, including Android)

Not "owned by us"? Yes. For the simple reason that "owned by us" means government phones, and governments have demonstrated what devices they'll build (ie. none), as well as how locked down they want these phones to be.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cewd82p09l0o

[AnonymousPlanet]

I believe this is an important puzzle piece for understanding the rapid shifts that are currently taking place. Thank you for laying it out so clearly.

[pg3uk]

Ads.

[goku12]

A smaller company would at least be less capable of ignoring the fines or the loss of market share. Or in other words, "too big to fail".

[ulrikrasmussen]

"Too big to fail" usually refers to companies such as banks that are such integral parts of the financial infrastructure that governments must bail them out when they screw up. In Google's case I would rather call it "too big to care", because every fine they get is basically a rounding error.

[1718627440]

They are also "too big to be regulated", which I would include in the "too big to fail" category.

[bamboozled]

It would be great if open source could some how solve this better. Like it's a shame UX / UI seems to be difficult for open source people to master, because I would really love a great open source phone without android on it.

[crossroadsguy]

Yes! Android doesn’t need an USP. Not anymore now that we have a stable equilibrium of this perfect duopoly.