We need to fight Google's new ID requirement for app developers. It isn't like showing ID at the airport. More like showing it at the printing press and only IDed authors are allowed to print books.
What Google doesn't talk about is that they build this ID system to ban developers and their apps.
People saying "But I use a degoogled custom ROM, so I won't be affected" are missing the point. Apps not on Google Play are already a niche. Banning them on most people's devices is a big issue, even if some people can still escape.
Also the general trend of Google becoming more closed may make even custom ROMs impossible eventually.
Under-reported detail: If you don't pay a fee to Google, they limit how many people can install your apps and how many apps you are allowed to have.
Source: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides/android-developer-console
Google asks what we think of their plans to block Android app installs outside of Google Play (unless the developers let Google verify their identity and pay a fee).
Want to tell them your opinion, just submit this form:
Use this form to submit questions or feedback about the new Android developer verification requirements announced in August 2025. You can learn more about the requirements in the Android developer verification guide. Sign up for early access here.
Do i understand it right, that having open source Apps from F-Droid would be no longer be technically possible on an Android phone that is not degoogled (like Murena)?
So you'd only be able to download Apps from Playstore if this becomes reality?
And ANY App developer has to pay a fee to google in order to he "verified" as allowed App?
Which gives Google finally complete controll over the App market on Android side from that day on?
MicroG /e/OS, LineageOS, Calyx... 📳 Looking for information? A small summary: (...microG is a partial reimplementation of some of the functionality in the Google Mobile Services (GMS) app. Unfortunately, this approach has significant drawbacks. In order to install microG, your version of Android OS needs support for spoofing the cryptographic signatures of apps. Some OSes like LineageOS and CalyxOS allow this. See...) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30170255 (...microG downloads proprietary Google libraries and then uses them...) https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/10793-clarification-about-microg-what-is-it-is-it-insecure/3 /e/OS is heavily marketed as private but in reality it has enormous privacy issues like this with their default apps and services. It's also heavily marketed as avoiding Google services but yet has privileged integration for Google services and connects to multiple by default. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114880787210183683 /e/OS doesn't keep up with basic privacy or security patches for the OS or browser engine used not only for the default browser but also the WebView used by many apps including email clients and far more for rendering web-based content. For more info see https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private. /e/OS is an extraordinarily insecure and non-private OS. The feature you're talking about heavily misrepresents what it does and doesn't prevent app tracking as it claims. What they provide is a poor implementation of DNS-based filtering to block connections not required for apps to function. The vast majority of privacy invasive behavior is left intact. It's also trivial for apps to fully bypass it for anything they want to do, and many apps do bypass it already. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114881066260884661 Murena is scamming people at a large scale for profit. They're pretending to provide a private OS which is in reality not at all private. We've explained how it lacks the most basic privacy and security. It even sends sensitive user data to OpenAI without informing users, which is far worse than how Apple and Google are handling speech-to-text from a privacy perspective. Contrary to their marketing, it gives extensive privileged access to Google services and always connects to them. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114881101019302892 /e/OS and Murena are scammers causing substantial harm to people through selling them extraordinarily insecure and non-private devices. It's a blatant grift for profit, not a serious attempt to provide people with better privacy or security. They do the opposite of that. @[email protected] We currently support every device meeting the very reasonable requirements listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. The purpose of GrapheneOS is providing people with privacy, not scamming them like /e/OS. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114881674418740613 /e/OS does not provide basic Android and Chromium privacy/security patches without huge delays while misleading users about it. They outright fail to ship huge portions of the patches for many months or even years. They substantially roll back the standard privacy/security model and features too. They aren't doing the bare minimum to protect user privacy and security. They're streaming's people microphone audio to OpenAI without telling them beyond a Terms of beyond https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114881915272221151 /e/OS is streaming user's microphone audio to OpenAI without telling them when they use speech-to-text. Meanwhile, Apple and Google at least support doing it locally. /e/OS is misleading users about the many missing privacy and security patches including setting a false Android security patch level and changing the user interface to downplay it. What's that if not having backdoors? /e/OS has repeatedly covered up their security weaknesses and vulnerabilities. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114882333091531816 Here's information from the founder of DivestOS: Issues with /e/OS: https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/commit/c7447de50bc8fadd20a30d4cbf1dcd8cf14805a0/static/misc/e.txt ASB update history: https://web.archive.org/web/20241231003546/https://divestos.org/pages/patch_history Chromium update history: https://web.archive.org/web/20250119212018/https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt Chromium update summary: https://infosec.exchange/@divested/112815308307602739 Here's an article from a privacy and security expert (Mike Kuketz) which touches on various issues including severely delayed patches, user tracking in the update client and privacy invasive default connections: https://kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfr https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114897292162814250 LineageOS is not a private or secure OS. microG is not a good implementation of providing compatibility with apps depending on Google Play and contrary to many people's misconceptions does not avoid using Google Play code as part of each app using it. We're building our own replacements for Google apps and services with a focus on privacy, security and providing fully comparable functionality and usability. We avoided microG because it doesn't meet our privacy and security standards. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114880999016665611 - eos987