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Android developer verification - The fox guarding the henhouse
Quoting: Android developer verification - The fox guarding the henhouse —
Google's desire to improve the security of the Android ecosystem is a good idea. Developer verification is also a reasonable approach. Alas, it's also the only thing Google can do, because it doesn't really have any control over the infrastructure upon which the billions of Android phones exist and communicate. At the same time, Google shouldn't be the legislative, executive and judiciary branch of this world. Eventually, the noble or good-intended solutions will get repurposed for totally unintended things, which will harm the end user. Who guards the guards, the legendary late Terry Pratchett wrote. The last few decades of the Internet offer plenty of data to support this. Almost exclusively, any technology designed to "protect" the end user ended up inconveniencing the end user. Sure, it's only the power users who grumble. But it doesn't change the reality.
Android needs improvement. The app side of things is wild beyond belief, and not in a good way. I have many suggestions on how to make things better, including the store, but those would not be profitable. They wouldn't "engage" the user. In fact, they would actively disengage them, so they are far less likely to make mistakes, and far less trusting of the ecosystem. The Internet is a dangerous place. Android Developer verification is an okay concept with bad execution, simply because it seems impossible to reconcile the conflicts of profit, competition and fairness or openness with the "strict" gatekeeping that Google proposes. The easiest way for Google to fix things is to simply make the Play Store safer for use, and let the rest of the platform be. But on a much deeper level, the whole things needs a hard reset. Back to 2010. Thank you for reading.