**Google is quietly taking away android's openness and india should definitely take notice** Starting from September 2026, Google will make all android app developers register with them, submit their government id, pay some fees, and hand over their app signing keys, **even for apps that are not on the play store** This has nothing to do with the play store, it is all about sideloading, the freedom that made android so popular in india, it allowed local developers to create apps for local needs without some us company controlling everything, and now that freedom is being taken away The EFF, FSF, F-Droid, and 34 other organizations have already signed an open letter talking about this, and india's turn is coming up soon If you think this matters for the open-source ecosystem, or for digital india's infrastructure independence, or just for your right to install whatever you want on your own phone, you can contact the CCI You can reach them at [cci-antitrust@cci.gov.in](mailto:cci-antitrust@cci.gov.in) You can find out more at [keepandroidopen.org](http://keepandroidopen.org/)
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Yeah, this is really bad, why should we even buy android when ios has better integration and performance, the problem is that not many people care about this and most users do not even know about it
I think this is a good thing, no more fake apks scamming people And to be fair, developers are a small group of users, there are 3 billion people using android and only 1 million developers, and before we complain to the cci, should we not do the same for apple, they have always been closed doors
All this is being done in the name of security
This is the worst update of the decade
I did not understand the post, is it about privacy
this is just google trying to be like the app store
I think it is time to switch to apple Google seems to be ruining the android experience, if that is the case, then apple's experience is at least better than google