probably only in the EU
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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The DMA isn’t about punishing successful companies: it’s about preventing gatekeepers from deciding who gets to compete. If Android users can choose their browser, they should be able to choose their AI assistant too. Competition should happen on product quality, not on who owns the operating system!
They should focus on not letting Google kill Android.
Do the EU have the capability to fork it?
I don't know, but I'm not sure if a government funded fork would be the right move.
Many people have their doubts about using funding for things like that, I wouldn't be opposed to it but Europe has other problems that people might consider more urgent.
It would absolutely be the right move. Some individual countries are already doing this and there are proposals for EU to do the same:
Yeah, it would be so much easier for the eu to do chat control is they controlled the while os
That's not how any of that works.
OK. So in that case the easiest thing to do is to hand out fines.
Is "kill" a strong word here? They are heavily restricting it, and it's reversible with some effort, know-how, and compromise, right?
But killing it, I feel like they are not. Even though I strongly oppose what they are doing, don't get me wrong!
I mean, it's the Android Open Source Project. Restricting it would be against the interests of the Free Software/Open Source movements and I believe that's a violation on the principles of the project in my opinion.
These changes don’t affect AOSP. Basically if the phone comes with the Google play store it is affected. AOSP doesn’t have Google play in it.
I forgot that, thank you.
I would agree, but I wouldn't say they are killing the project. 👍
Can't they not let Android get locked down in a few months too? It'll almost become as bad as iOS at that point. Who knows they might even block installation of other OSs in the future.
The EU doesn't actually care about user freedom, they just want as much surveillance as possible.
I love how many upvotes this simplistic view gets on lemmy. EU passed strongest privacy laws on the planet, leading the way and inspiring many other countries to follow and now it's actually enforcing them by punishing biggest corporations but the narrative on lemmy is still that they are terrible surveillance state. Why? Because they proposed a law that would force some social media sites with history of being used to groom children to do age verification while preserving privacy and encryption. A law that did not pass. The narrative that EU is fighting privacy is so stupid it just has to be propaganda. And we all know who's spreading it.
They care about European markets and ensuring those markets can compete. This is all public day to day infrastructure now. It's about long-term survival.
Almost?
Theoretically you'll still be able to sideload but only after going through a convoluted process.
Convoluted process where the developer of the app has to sell their soul to Google
No, I was talking about the convoluted process of downloading, not uploading.
yes I understand, but I was just mentioning that the process is convoluted for everyone involved. people tend to forget the troubles of devs and maintainers.
No, that convoluted process will let people install the apps directly from play store. The process to "sideload" (not really sideloading but let's just say it is for simplicity) is a different convoluted process.
In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents, including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.
The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot “take over” the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications.
(implying that even non-play store apps needs Devs to give their info to google)
source: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
granted, this is a secondary source, but it does link the primary source within the quoted text.
There are to separate flows. One flow is for developers to register with google. That's the one you described. There's another flow for Android users to install apps from unregistered devs ("sideload" app).
They had no reason to wait till the AI boom for this, could have done it long ago when google assistant was the only one allowed access to these things.