#google-play-store — Public Fediverse posts

Founder of queer dating app Goose quits after AI controversy

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/people/derek-chadwick-goose

il tuo telefono sta per smettere di essere tuo

https://keepandroidopen.org/it/

Il tuo telefono sta per smettere di essere tuo.

A partire dal 2027 un aggiornamento silenzioso, imposto da Google senza il consenso degli utenti, bloccherà tutte le applicazioni Android i cui sviluppatori non si siano registrati presso l’azienda, non abbiano firmato il contratto, non abbiano pagato e non abbiano fornito un documento d’identità.

Tutte le applicazioni e tutti i dispositivi, in tutto il mondo, senza possibilità di rinuncia.

È una questione più grande di Android

Se Google può bloccare retroattivamente miliardi di dispositivi venduti come piattaforme aperte, tutti i produttori di hardware del pianeta stanno a guardare.

Il principio che si sta affermando è il seguente: l’azienda che ha prodotto il tuo dispositivo può decidere, dopo che l’hai acquistato, quale software ti è permesso utilizzare. Nel mondo del software questo si chiama truffa, ma almeno è sempre possibile installare un software concorrente. Nel mondo dell’hardware, invece, è un fatto compiuto che ti priva di ogni autonomia e ti rende impotente di fronte ai capricci di un unico controllore che non deve rendere conto a nessuno e che è stato dichiarato monopolista.

Informazioni complete qui: 
https://keepandroidopen.org/it/

USA 🇺🇸 : #Google :google: muss Installation alternativer App-Stores auf #Android :android: vereinfachen | heise online https://www.heise.de/news/USA-Google-muss-Installation-alternativer-App-Stores-auf-Android-vereinfachen-11413762.html #GooglePlay #PlayStore #GooglePlayStore

Lilbits: Ploopy’s A+ trackball has eight buttons (two are also dials), Xteink X4 discontinued, and more

A company with a funny name has made some of the most interesting computer input devices of recent years. Ploopy got its start with trackballs, at a time when bigger companies were exiting the space. Since then, the company has made trackpads, pointing sticks, and dials.

Now the company is bringing some of those gadgets together with the new Ploopy A+. It’s a trackball mouse with eight […]

USA: Google must simplify installation of alternative app stores on Android

A US judge has ordered Google to simplify the installation of alternative app stores in the Play Store and remove anti-competitive hurdles.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/USA-Google-must-simplify-installation-of-alternative-app-stores-on-Android-11413821.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #Apps #EpicGames #GooglePlayStore #IT #Smartphone #Wettbewerbsrecht #news

USA: Google muss Installation alternativer App-Stores auf Android vereinfachen

Ein US-Richter hat Google dazu verpflichtet, die Installation alternativer App-Stores im Play Store zu vereinfachen und wettbewerbsbehindernde Hürden abzubauen.

https://www.heise.de/news/USA-Google-muss-Installation-alternativer-App-Stores-auf-Android-vereinfachen-11413762.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #Apps #EpicGames #GooglePlayStore #IT #Smartphone #Wettbewerbsrecht #news

Erster alternativer #AppStore bei #GooglePlay USA 🇺🇸 | heise online https://www.heise.de/news/Erster-alternativer-App-Store-bei-Google-Play-USA-11409444.html #Aptoide #Google :google: #GooglePlayStore #PlayStore #Android :android:

Opinion: Google Has Become Too Powerful for Democracy to Ignore

By Cliff Potts | WPS News Opinion

BAYBAY CITY, LEYTE, Philippines, August 3, 2026 — 0005 PhST

The question is no longer whether Google has become one of the most influential corporations in human history. That question has already been answered.

The real question is whether any democratic society should permit a single private corporation to exercise such sweeping control over how information is discovered, distributed, monetized, and preserved.

Google is no longer merely a search engine.

Through its parent company, Alphabet, Google controls the world’s dominant search platform, YouTube, the Android operating system, the Google Play Store, one of the largest digital-advertising operations in existence, the Chrome browser, major artificial-intelligence systems, mapping services, analytics, cloud infrastructure, and an extraordinary volume of information about its users.

Each of those operations is powerful on its own.

Combined under one corporate roof, they create a digital ecosystem capable of influencing who is found, who earns money, which businesses reach customers, which applications succeed, which publishers remain visible, and which voices effectively disappear.

That ownership structure creates the opportunity for abuse.

Google Search can reinforce Google advertising. Android can reinforce Google Search. Chrome can reinforce both. The Play Store can dictate the terms under which software developers reach mobile users. YouTube can determine which videos are recommended, which channels qualify for advertising revenue, and which publishers lose practical access to audiences they spent years building.

None of this requires a secret meeting in which executives decide to destroy one particular publisher.

A recommendation system can quietly stop recommending a channel. A search-ranking adjustment can bury a publication. An automated advertising classification can eliminate revenue. An account restriction can remove years of accumulated work.

The person or organization affected may receive little more than a generic notice—or no useful explanation at all.

That is an unacceptable amount of unaccountable power.

Breaking Up Google Is Not a Fringe Proposal

Calls for structural action against Google are not confined to activists, angry creators, or small publishers.

In 2024, a federal court found that Google had illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search-text advertising. During the remedies phase, the United States Department of Justice proposed measures that included forcing Google to divest Chrome and restricting its use of Android and other products to protect its search dominance.

The court ultimately rejected the proposed Chrome divestiture. Its final judgment instead prohibited certain exclusive distribution contracts, required Google to provide qualifying competitors with access to specified search and user-interaction data, ordered syndication opportunities for search results and advertising, and established continuing technical oversight.

Those remedies were significant, but the court’s decision not to order a breakup does not make structural separation an unreasonable idea. It confirms that divestiture was seriously proposed, litigated, and considered within an actual federal antitrust case—not invented in an internet comment section.

The Justice Department has also won a separate case in which a federal court found that Google unlawfully monopolized important parts of the open-web digital-advertising market. According to the Justice Department, Google’s conduct harmed publishers, competition, and ultimately the consumers who depend upon information distributed across the open web.

That finding should matter greatly to every independent news organization.

A company that controls advertising technology while also operating competing services does not occupy the position of a neutral intermediary. It participates in the same market it helps govern.

Google disputes allegations against it and continues exercising its legal rights in court. It is entitled to do so.

The public is equally entitled to question whether the company should continue controlling so many interconnected layers of the digital economy.

Europe Already Calls Alphabet a Gatekeeper

The European Union has formally designated Alphabet a digital “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act.

The designation covers core services including Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Alphabet’s online-advertising operations.

The term is appropriate.

These services do not merely compete within digital markets. They frequently determine how other businesses enter those markets, find customers, collect revenue, and survive.

The Digital Markets Act attempts to address that power before another decade-long competition case reaches its conclusion. Instead of relying exclusively upon punishment after damage has occurred, it places advance obligations and prohibitions upon companies possessing entrenched control over essential digital services.

That approach recognizes a basic problem with ordinary antitrust enforcement: by the time a case is investigated, tried, appealed, and remedied, smaller competitors may already be gone.

A fine imposed years later does not restore a publication that closed, a developer who abandoned an application, or a creator whose audience disappeared.

When financial penalties become routine operating expenses, governments must move beyond fines and consider structural remedies.

The Transparency Failure

I cannot honestly claim, without reliable supporting data, that most political creators affected by demonetization or reduced distribution are left-wing, progressive, or pro-democracy publishers.

Progressive creators have accused YouTube of unequal treatment.

Conservative creators have made the opposite accusation.

The available public information does not establish which political group experiences the greatest overall harm.

That absence of evidence does not clear YouTube.

It exposes the transparency problem.

Independent researchers cannot adequately determine whether YouTube’s enforcement is politically neutral because the company does not disclose enough channel-level information about recommendation reductions, monetization classifications, automated decisions, reversals, comparative enforcement, and the practical effects of its algorithms.

YouTube publishes extensive rules governing monetization and advertiser-friendly content. Those policies describe broad categories of material that may receive limited advertising or no advertising.

They do not necessarily tell an individual publisher why views dropped from thousands to hundreds and then to tens.

They do not reveal whether a channel stopped appearing in recommendations.

They do not explain whether an automated system changed its classification of the channel.

They do not demonstrate whether politically comparable channels received comparable treatment.

They do not provide the public with enough information to audit a system that helps determine what billions of people see.

That is the issue.

A system does not need to ban political speech outright to diminish it. It can simply stop showing that speech to people.

I Have Watched the Audience Disappear

This is not an abstract concern for me.

I have watched my own work receive thousands of views, then hundreds, and eventually numbers in the tens. That decline occurred while the company controlling distribution provided no intelligible explanation of what changed.

I cannot prove in a courtroom that Google or YouTube politically targeted Cliff Potts.

I can prove that an opaque, Google-owned system possessed the practical ability to withdraw access to an audience without explaining itself in any meaningful way.

That alone is a democratic problem.

It is also an antitrust problem.

Journalism, political commentary, music, education, and public advocacy increasingly depend upon privately operated systems that can alter distribution without notice. Publishers may technically remain free to speak while being denied any realistic opportunity to be heard.

Freedom of speech is not a legal guarantee of an audience.

But when one corporation has acquired extraordinary control over whether an audience can find that speech, elected governments have every right to investigate how that power is being exercised.

Break Apart the Conflicting Functions

The answer is not another vague request that YouTube “do better.”

The ownership structure itself must be examined.

Search should not reinforce advertising.

Advertising should not reinforce YouTube.

Android should not reinforce Search.

The Play Store should not reinforce every other Google business.

Chrome should not function as another mechanism for protecting Google’s position.

Artificial intelligence should not be allowed to absorb information from independent publishers, answer users directly, and then deprive the original publishers of the traffic required to survive.

Conflicting business functions should be separated.

Self-preferencing should be prohibited.

Recommendation and monetization systems should be independently audited.

Publishers and creators should receive meaningful explanations when distribution or revenue is materially restricted.

Appeals should be decided by accountable human reviewers rather than disappearing into another automated system.

Regulators should have access to the records necessary to determine whether enforcement is consistent, discriminatory, anticompetitive, or politically uneven.

Independent researchers should be permitted to study the effects of recommendation systems without depending entirely upon information selected and released by the company being examined.

When fines fail to change conduct, structural separation should remain available.

These are not attacks upon innovation.

They are protections against concentrated power.

Democratic societies regulate utilities, financial institutions, telecommunications systems, transportation networks, and other industries capable of affecting the public at enormous scale.

They should not exempt the corporations governing digital discovery merely because their control is exercised through algorithms instead of physical gates.

No private company should possess the practical ability to determine who is discovered, who is heard, who earns a living, and who quietly disappears from public view without meaningful explanation or independent oversight.

Google has become too powerful for democracy to ignore.

The only remaining question is whether democratic governments will act before that power becomes permanent.

Sources

U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google

U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google

U.S. Department of Justice: United States and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC

European Commission: Digital Markets Act Designated Gatekeepers

European Commission: The Digital Markets Act

YouTube: Channel Monetization Policies

YouTube: What Kind of Content Can I Monetize?

Contact Cliff Potts

Cliff Potts
Founder, Publisher & Editor
WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines

WPS News
WPS.News

Bluesky — Preferred Public Contact
WTFM.LOL

Occupy 2.5
Occupy25.com

Cliff Potts
CliffPotts.org

Cliff Potts is also the creator of Cliff Potts & the AI Rebellion, with music available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, TIDAL, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms worldwide.

For news, commentary, music, and ongoing projects, begin with WPS.News or contact Cliff publicly through Bluesky at WTFM.LOL.

RE: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116936668043273041

I see a lot of "the #Rabobank #app doesn't work on @GrapheneOS anymore" going around again lately. I can confirm it works just fine 😉.

Some people just share hearsay they heard from others, while others confuse it not installing trough the #GooglePlayStore as the app not working. Which was broken ages ago, nothing new there. Afaik that's still a thing, but I don't use #Google's #PlayStore so not sure. Regardless, the app works just fine when installed with #Aurora #appstore or using any other method.

See this threat, for more in-dept info regarding it:

google's inaction allows toxic ads to ruin android app ecosystem

📰 Original title: As Google sits back and watches, terrible ads are ruining Android's free app ecosystem

🤖 IA: It's not clickbait ✅
👥 Users: It's not clickbait ✅

View full AI summary https://en.killbait.com/google-s-inaction-allows-toxic-ads-to-ruin-android-app-ecosystem.html?utm_source=mastodon_world&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=killbait.mastodon_world

#technology #androidapps #googleplaystore #advertising

Alternative App-Stores bald im US-Play-Store verfügbar | heise online https://www.heise.de/news/Alternative-App-Stores-bald-im-US-Play-Store-verfuegbar-11365841.html #Google :google: #PlayStore #GooglePlay #Android :android: #GooglePlayStore

Lilbits: Steam Deck LCD spare parts, the Asus ROG Ally X20 will be available without AR glasses, and 3rd-party app stores are coming to the Google Play Store

I’m resisting the urge to start this post with a “yo dawg” meme, but Google is about to start putting app stores inside its app store, as the company gives up on its quest to modify a court order that stopped the company from blocking developers from distributing competing app stores in the Google Play […]

Alternative app stores soon available in the US Play Store

In the US, Android users will likely be able to download third-party app stores directly from the Play Store starting next week.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Alternative-app-stores-soon-available-in-the-US-Play-Store-11366173.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #EpicGames #Google #GooglePlayStore #Mobiles #news

Alternative App-Stores bald im US-Play-Store verfügbar

In den USA können Android-Nutzer voraussichtlich ab der nächsten Woche App-Stores von Drittanbietern direkt über den Play Store herunterladen.

https://www.heise.de/news/Alternative-App-Stores-bald-im-US-Play-Store-verfuegbar-11365841.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #EpicGames #Google #GooglePlayStore #Mobiles #news

@IzzyOnDroid
The passive-aggressive!: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding.”
That “any inconvenience“ rather than “the inconvenience“… etc. The FU comes thru loud & clear.

#anyInconvenience #passiveAggressive #GooglePlayStore

Oh goody my favorite kind of unskippable full screen malware ad. This shit is standard for ad supported apps on #googleplaystore #googleadsense and yet we're not allowed to sideload apps because "security"

#GooglePlay: Alternative Bezahlsysteme ab 30. Juni weltweit erlaubt | heise online https://www.heise.de/news/Play-Store-Google-laesst-externe-Bezahlmethoden-zu-11343864.html #PlayStore #GooglePlayStore #Google :google: #Android :android:

Play Update: Google brings WhatsApp backup management to device settings

Google is distributing new features for Android devices via Play Services. An update will enable central management of WhatsApp backups in the future.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Play-Update-Google-brings-WhatsApp-backup-management-to-device-settings-11333698.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #CloudComputing #GoogleOne #GooglePlayStore #Mobiles #Updates #WhatsApp #news

Play-Update: Google bringt WhatsApp-Backupverwaltung in Geräteeinstellungen

Google verteilt neue Funktionen für Android-Geräte über die Play-Dienste. Ein Update ermöglicht künftig die zentrale Verwaltung von WhatsApp-Backups.

https://www.heise.de/news/Play-Update-Google-bringt-WhatsApp-Backupverwaltung-in-Geraeteeinstellungen-11333661.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #CloudComputing #GoogleOne #GooglePlayStore #Mobiles #Updates #WhatsApp #news

🚛 Neuer Beitrag auf ChristiansBlog.eu

Warum die Parkplatzkarte niemals eine richtige App sein wird

Play Store, Kosten, neue Google-Regeln und der Wunsch nach Unabhängigkeit: Warum die Parkplatzkarte bewusst als PWA bleibt – und weshalb das für Fahrer sogar Vorteile haben kann.

🔗 https://christiansblog.eu/post/bkf/niemalseineapp/

#PWA #ProgressiveWebApp #Android #GooglePlayStore #LKW #Parkplatzkarte #Berufskraftfahrer #Digitalisierung #Transportbranche #Webentwicklung

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/06/04/ai-training-google-pays-android-developers-for-sharing-their-app-code-xcxwbn/

Google has started a pilot which pays Play Store developers for private Android app code, leaving pricing, retention and AI-training limits unclear.

#AI #Google #GooglePlayStore #AndroidApps #Android #AITraining #AICoding #GoogleAI

„#CallPhantom“: #Android :android: -App liefert falsche Daten anstatt Anrufprotokolle | Security https://www.heise.de/news/CallPhantom-Betruegerische-Android-Apps-zocken-Neugierige-ab-11285846.html #Google :google: #PlayStore #GooglePlay #GooglePlayStore

"CallPhantom": Fraudulent Android apps scam the curious

The apps in the "CallPhantom" campaign promise to provide call history for any number for a fee. The data is fabricated.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/CallPhantom-Fraudulent-Android-apps-scam-the-curious-11286032.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Apps #Kriminalität #GooglePlayStore #IT #Security #news

„CallPhantom“: Betrügerische Android-Apps zocken Neugierige ab

Die Apps der „CallPhantom“-Kampagne versprechen, gegen Zahlung Anrufverlauf beliebiger Nummern zu liefern. Die Daten sind erfunden.

https://www.heise.de/news/CallPhantom-Betruegerische-Android-Apps-zocken-Neugierige-ab-11285846.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Apps #Kriminalität #GooglePlayStore #IT #Security #news

Sicherheit oder Bevormundung? Google zieht bei Android die Daumenschrauben an

Auf Android-Geräten wird die Installation unverifizierter Apps schwieriger. Was mit mehr Sicherheit begründet wird, sorgt für Unmut bei Nutzern und Entwicklern.

https://www.heise.de/article/Sicherheit-oder-Bevormundung-Google-zieht-bei-Android-die-Daumenschrauben-an-11268094.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Android #Cybersecurity #Google #GooglePlayStore #Software #news