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Third-party app stores coming to Google Play next week as Epic settlement withdrawn
(arstechnica.com)
And how does Google's forthcoming lockdown play into all that?
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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They want to verify apps from other stores too, starting with six other stores in select countries on Sept 30 and globally for all apps in 2027.
Perhaps one can hope that the courts have to say something about that too.
That's the important question to ask
This is the real reason for the forthcoming lockdown.
How is it this works for android, but not for Apple?
Google arent really opening anything up, so its happening for neither.
If anything this is closing things down further. You can already use 3rd party app stores that you can just install from an apk, but this change along with the upcoming changes in September will coerce people towards using the play store even if it's just to download another app store first
iPhone is opened for third party app stores in Brazil, Japan and in the EU. Source
I wouldn't call it open. It's still painful to install/maintain it with all the bullshit Apple came up with.
And will be similarly painful for android
Tim Cook's not smugly arrogant & knows how to smooth things over, grease the right wheels, etc. Sundar Pichai... not so much.
Apple's app store policies were set by Jobs. Probably why they didn't get pinched like Google did. Slick fucker.
So we can just install F-droid from the app store?
The court has allowed Google to charge reasonable fees to cover its security and compliance review of third-party stores, which will be $5,000 per year.
This is the best possible outcome for Google: providing alternative application stores through the Play Store. So any application, including alternative application stores, are subject to universal app verification rules: allowing it to fully kill "sideloading" (as in: installing an APK from the web); while technically providing alternatives, gatekept by Google. The latter will likely just result in Play Store mirrors, that hardly provide any real competitive advantage over upstream. A purely symbolic, absolute joke of a court case.
Seems to be a recurring theme for court cases involving Google. Google should have been broken up by Judge Mehta for monopoly on search. I want them to get more than a slap on the wrist next time with the ongoing ad monopoly case, but I don’t have high hopes. Highly recommend people to degoogle. I haven’t touched anything they put out in years. I block them where I can and use alternatives or just don’t use their platforms.
Wake me up when Valve has an app store on Android that leverages the FEX translation layer to run my Steam library. Gamehub and Gamenative are not my favorite.
It costs 5000 dollars and you get to pay more up the ass for the privilege. This isn’t f-droid repos this is just providing an alternative for only entities like Epic Games to idfk sell you indie games like with the regular store they have.
Wow. Wow! This is going to change EVERYTHING!
Steam when