{"id":15255,"date":"2026-03-05T18:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/?p=15255"},"modified":"2026-03-05T09:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:49:32","slug":"google-wheres-the-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2026\/03\/05\/google-wheres-the-catch\/","title":{"rendered":"Google, where’s the catch?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google Ends Its 30% App Store Fee, Welcomes Third-Party App Stores<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

Someone comments “Please don’t legislate me as a monopoly!”<\/em>, others point out that the developer “only” needs to register on Google to be able to run anything on Android.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was wondering if this could be turned into an opportunity to finance the development of free-as-in-freedom software. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Let me explain: you only upload on the Play Store the paid version, while on F-Droid the free one, taking for granted that people using F-Droid will be technivally savvy enough to circument Google’s obstacles to side-loading. Provided Google don’t completely ban side-loading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact Google will turn Android into a locked-down platform in a few months, so please Read keepandroidopen.org<\/a> open letter opposing the Android Developer Verification program<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please, help them<\/a> pressuring Google to Keep Android Open<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people propose to define the request for non-anonymous registration of devs on the Play Store as an anti-competitive practice (or detrimental to the market), but I agree with those stating that this stance is hardly useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not being able to develop and run apps without notifying Google of your identity can be problematic, although when governments are behind such requests it is very difficult to dodge them. I want to maintain my freedom to run the software I want on my hardware. Sadly from a technical-legal point of view government may mandate such identification. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is almost exactly the scenario depicted in the cautionary tale The Right to Read<\/a><\/em> here the origical copy from fsf.org website<\/a><\/em>. I will do anything legal to avoid such crazy requirements to become laws but I also remember that in the past slavery was legal, racism was mandatory <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google Ends Its 30% App Store Fee, Welcomes Third-Party App Stores Someone comments “Please don’t legislate me as a monopoly!”, others point out that the developer “only” needs to register on Google to be able to run anything on Android. I was wondering if this could be turned into an opportunity to finance the development…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/03\/altered-deal.webp?fit=1280%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6daft-3Y3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13348,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2025\/05\/14\/yet-another-reason-to-avoid-google\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":0},"title":"Yet Another Reason to avoid Google","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2025-05-14","format":false,"excerpt":"For my series \"yet another reason to avoid x\"\u2026 this time is Google's turn Nextcloud has accused Google of sabotaging its Android Files app by revoking the \"All files access\" permission, which the company says cripples functionality for its 824,000 users and forces reliance on limited alternatives like SAF and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Yet another reason to avoid"","block_context":{"text":"Yet another reason to avoid","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/ethics\/yet-another-reason-to-avoid\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5946,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2019\/09\/09\/use-briar-instead-of-bridgefy\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":1},"title":"Use Briar instead of Bridgefy!!!","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2019-09-09","format":false,"excerpt":"Hong Kong Protesters Using Mesh Messaging App China Can't Block: Usage Up 3685% - Slashdot: An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn't use the internet. That's exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Android"","block_context":{"text":"Android","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/smartphones\/android\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/09\/fdroid_badge.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/09\/fdroid_badge.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/09\/fdroid_badge.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9379,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2022\/05\/14\/la-vera-anima-delleuropa\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":2},"title":"La vera anima dell’Europa","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2022-05-14","format":false,"excerpt":"Questa sera mi sto attardando per spostare tutto lo spostabile dal vecchio telefono della mia dolce met\u00e0 - un Asus Zenfone - ad un nuovo Samsumg Galaxy A22. Erano tre-quattro mesi che iniziava ad avere \"qualche acciacco\" ma ora l'altoparlante della parte telefonica ha semplicemente smesso di telefonare. E purtroppo\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ethics"","block_context":{"text":"Ethics","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/ethics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/RDxZ_WIZ29yys\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5173,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2019\/02\/04\/google-play-store-now-open-for-progressive-web-apps-slashdot\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":3},"title":"Google Play Store Now Open For Progressive Web Apps – Slashdot","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2019-02-04","format":false,"excerpt":"Google Play Store Now Open For Progressive Web Apps - Slashdot Chrome 72 for Android shipped the long-awaited Trusted Web Activity feature, which means we can now distribute PWAs in the Google Play Store! I played with the feature for a while, digging into the APIs and here you have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Android"","block_context":{"text":"Android","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/smartphones\/android\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5395,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2019\/03\/25\/mozilla-stumbler-app-su-google-play\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":4},"title":"Mozilla Stumbler – App su Google Play","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2019-03-25","format":"link","excerpt":"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=org.mozilla.mozstumbler","rel":"","context":"In "Android"","block_context":{"text":"Android","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/android-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9606,"url":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/2022\/09\/17\/how-to-degoogle-any-android-phone-without-root-degoogle\/","url_meta":{"origin":15255,"position":5},"title":"How to DeGoogle any Android phone WITHOUT root! : degoogle","author":"Paolo Redaelli","date":"2022-09-17","format":false,"excerpt":"Just a link. I know it is a wide and hard issue, but this can be a start: How to DeGoogle any Android phone WITHOUT root! I will show you how to uninstall\/disable any system app without root, the process takes around 2 minutes and is reversible (therefore 100% safe)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Android"","block_context":{"text":"Android","link":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/category\/android-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15255"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15269,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255\/revisions\/15269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monodes.com\/predaelli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}