And then after doing all that you still need to confirm a scary warning every single time you install an app. As if it wasn’t enough.

Yeah, and currently you don’t need to know what an apk is to install them.

A VPN to me is a way to prevent my ISP from seeing I torrent and to go around geoblocks. It’s not a privacy tool at all. So yeah, I’m evaluating them from that angle.

From what angle is it easy to do?

• Enable developer mode (using a hidden process where you have to know where to find it)
• Go through a scary form
• Restart the device
• Wait 24 hours?!
• Go to the settings again
• Do some more scary confirmations
• Check another scary checkbox
• And then… confirm again every single time you install an app

And you are telling me it’s easy to do? I can go publish a diet tracking app and Aunt Flo will happily go through this and I won’t lose customers?

I feel like anything you want to get that’s not on the Play Store, you’re gonna be savvy enough to install.

Yes, that’s my point. Google making it so that you have to be a tech savvy user to install anything from outside the Play Store is why there is nothing outside the Play Store that a non-tech savvy user would be interested in, because why would there be if no one is going to install it anyway. Fortnite was a big example where you had to download the APK from their website, and they sued Google that it was too hard for users. And it was before these changes which make it incredibly harder.

They also know it’s you when you don’t use it. I’m not sure how is it worse? Seems like a handy way to go around geoblocks.

No, you do this and then you can’t install anything, because no developer will choose this process as their publishing strategy.

Apps outside the Play Store will be dead, which is the point.

That’s already the case. The new thing is that they want developers to share their ID to have their apps be installable on Android in the first place, even if they don’t use the Play Store.