The site: https://keepandroidopen.org/ , aimed at Google. And the people behind this are not a random crowd: They are 71 organizations from 23 countries, most of them are the names inside your phone and computer.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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I did the "escape hatch", as they call it. They make it sound so scary. It's so fucking easy.
If you can't follow those simple steps, you probably shouldn't be downloading unverified apps.
And yet on every other computing device I own I don't need some escape hatch to install software. Imagine if Windows did this.
Windows is a great example because Windows S mode does exactly what Google, Apple et al use as their excuse for their avaricious walled gardens. If you want a safe Windows machine, e.g. for business or for wobbly grandparents, that only installs verified apps from the Windows Store and refuses anything else, you can do a clean install in S mode and it will enforce exactly that. If you want to remove S mode and take your chances with everything else, it's your machine, you paid for it, they don't try to stop you doing it.
Absolutely no technical reason why Apple and Google can't work on that principle. It's all about shareholder returns and a corrupt government who won't enforce their own antitrust laws.
Some PCs come with windows in S mode https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/experience/platform-variants/switching-out-of-s-mode-in-windows
MS hasn't defaulted to it yet but they're surely working toward it.