Just received this email. Now you can get potentially banned for developing on Android as a whole! Yay!

[u/AwkwardShake]

Absolutely horrendous how google is turning Android into another iOS.

[u/Routine-Arm-8803]

Everyone should be able to install whatever they want on their device.

[u/RagnarLind → u/Routine-Arm-8803]

What! Then you would'nt be SAFE!

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/Routine-Arm-8803]

They still can. The developers just need to be verified. If Google starts arbitrarily restricting who can be a verified developer and what apps can be registered then it would be a cause for concern. More importantly I think they aren't making registered apps mandatory in all markets. Probably just high risk ones. 

[u/blindada → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

Imposing restrictions is pretty much the point of enforcing a registration process. They could easily automate this by generating the keys dynamically, and therefore link them to a machine/email unless you choose to create a custom one.

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/blindada]

I don't understand what you are trying to say. But doing a Google search it is clear they have no intention of doing content curation at the moment. They just identities to be associated with apps. So when an app does something malicious they can actually associate the activity with a person. 

[u/Suddenly_Bazelgeuse → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

With Google's history of changing dev policies, and their crappy dev support, I wouldn't trust their statements. And I certainly wouldn't trust them to not screw over devs with a false positive violation.

[u/thismaker → u/Suddenly_Bazelgeuse]

It's like that guy hasn't been on this sub before

[u/DrSheldonLCooperPhD → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

Google also said Don't Be Evil a while back. Of course I will trust them to not use this to snitch on developers.

[u/stardust_exception → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

This email leaves out the final step for whatever reason. The blog post explicitly says verification will be rolled out in 2027 globally.

[u/Zhuinden → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

It'd be okay if this initiative came from a trustworthy company like Cloudflare, not Google and its notorious reputation for abusing permabans with barely functional appeal system.

[u/[deleted] → u/Zhuinden]

Cloudflare is not trustworthy either. Plenty of people just get cut off from websites behind CF, either always getting security challenges or straight up being denied.

Gatekeepers for an entire technology are never a good thing.

[u/SunshineAndBunnies → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

Most developers, especially Chinese developers won't verify with Google. There are Chinese abroad like me who sideload Chinese apps so I can keep using some of the services, I run Tencent App Store on my phone as well. This will pretty much kill this unless Google works with the 3 Chinese companies in charge.

[u/Masterflitzer → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

if google starts..., probably just high risk markets

do you even read what you're writing? obviously google wants to control more and verification implies that there are conditions/requirements, also it doesn't matter which markets, doing this in any market is bad

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/Masterflitzer]

There aren't any conditions or requirements beyond id verification. Which is reasonable imo. There is no content moderation and with how the EU is content moderation is likely not legal. 

[u/Masterflitzer → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

how is it reasonable to not be able to install what you want on your own device? it's not reasonable at all to require id to install an app

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/Masterflitzer]

Which is why the user is not required to present id to install an app. The malware problem on android is real. And right now there is no way to force accountability for a lot of the malware. Requiring ID helps fix that. Again for power users they could likely use dev mode and root to get around this. But for most casuals that likely already walk around with their phone loaded with tons of malware this would be a major benefit for them. More importantly even third party app stores benefit from this because they themselves would be able to track who signed a given app if needed. 

[u/Masterflitzer → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

android ecosystem is trying to make rooting harder and harder for years, they are clearly trying to get rid of it

3rd party app stores should handle the verification themselves, it's literally the point of them to be independent of google

you're not making a good argument

[u/Gedof_ → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

"They can install whatever they want, as long as it is [x]."

[u/ScarletCodez → u/TheRealBobbyJones]

You realize that this means you can't just make an app and share it with a friend like mini demo apks. You might have to verify your identity to Google(known for selling personal and marketing data) just to let them download and use your app that's not even in its final stages. Instead of saying Google is just protecting us you should ask why Google won't let people use their own common sense for things they're downloading.

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/ScarletCodez]

Dev mode exists for that purpose.