Google Bricks Up Its Walled Garden
October 8, 2025
Google is adding bricks to its garden wall, insisting Android-app developers must pay up or stay out. Neowin declares, “Google’s Shocking Developer Decree Struggles to Justify the Urgent Threat to F-Droid.” The new edict requires anyone developing an app for Android to register with Google, whether or not they sell through its Play Store. Registration requires paying a fee, uploading personal IDs, and agreeing to Google’s fine print.
The measure will have a large impact on alternative app stores like F-Droid. That open-source publisher, with its focus on privacy, is particularly concerned about the requirements. In fact, it would rather shutter its project than force developers to register with Google. That would mean thousands of verified apps will vanish from the Web, never to be downloaded or updated again. F-Droid suspects Google’s motives are far from pure. Writer Paul Hill tells us:
“F-Droid has questioned whether forced registration will really solve anything because lots of malware apps have been found in the Google Play Store over the years, demonstrating that corporate gatekeeping doesn’t mean users are protected. F-Droid also points out that Google already defends users against malicious third-party apps with the Play Protect services which scan and disable malware apps, regardless of their origin. While not true for all alternative app stores, F-Droid already has strong security because the apps it includes are all open source that anyone can audit, the build logs are public, and builds are reproducible. When you submit an app to F-Droid, the maintainers help set up your repository properly so that when you publish an update to your code, F-Droid’s servers manually build the executable, this prevents the addition of any malware not in the source code.”
Sounds at least as secure as the Play Store to us. So what is really going on? The write-up states:
“The F-Droid project has said that it doesn’t believe that the developer registration is motivated by security. Instead, it thinks that Google is trying to consolidate power by tightening control over a formerly open ecosystem. It said that by tying application identifiers to personal ID checks and fees, it creates a choke point that restricts competition and limits user freedom.”
F-Droid is responding with a call for regulators to scrutinize this and other Googley moves for monopolistic tendencies. It also wants safeguards for app stores that wish to protect developers’ privacy. Who will win this struggle between independent app stores and the tech giant?
Cynthia Murrell, October 8, 2025
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
