alt Hacker NewsI feel like many commenters are misunderstanding what this is about. This is about apps that are distributed via Google Play. It's an exception to the long-standing rules that a) all monetary transactions for non-physical items must use IAPs, and b) a Google Play distributed app can't install or ask the user to install something from outside of Google Play.
As far as I can tell, none of this applies to apps installed from elsewhere, be that F-Droid, other stores like RuStore, or just a downloaded apk. As long as the alternative store itself wasn't installed from Google Play that is, but none of them work like that anyway.
I'm not defending Google of course. Their entitlement is still insane.
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A common pattern in social networks with a political identity, is that bait news stories are less scrutinized for truthfulness and more baited into raging. E.g:
Political group:Right
Social media: twitter
Headline: "the police detained a 15 yo for posting on tiktok"
Reality: "15yo called for violence on a specific event and group of people"
Pol group: left
Social media: bluesky
Headline: "young mother of 2 gets detained by ICE for speaking in spanish"
Reality: "DUI, didn't speak english, translator was used, prior records"
Reminds me of how phishing attempts play to our political identities as well, recently there was a phishing attempt were the platform said that during pride month all uploaded content would have the pride flag added or something like that.
The common pattern is that some things are ridiculous, but people want to believe that "the enemy" is as ridiculous, it's an opportunity to be enraged and vindicated that the injustice is too obvious to hold on its own. That it will all come crumbling down, or at least that any insecurities in our political positioning are reduced, and our position becomes clearer and our certainty increased.
In our case, it seems to be something very specific about external links from the play store. I can't be sure but it seems as if this rule relates to apps distributed through the google play store that in turn can download other apps. This provides an alternative agreement to the rev share model, where app stores can pay per install rather than on all future revenue.
Let's try to understand news and be on the same page before analyzing implications.
Since Google is making sure to use all its monopolistic power for keeping Google Play the "default" app store for 99% of users, I fail to see this distinction as particularly relevant. From an anticompetitiveness perspective, that is.