Exactly. This is deeply troubling to me. I'm going to assume the best and apply Hanlon's Razor and think that this isn't their intent, but it will certainly be the outcome.

I really hope they reverse course, and soon. They are creating a world I don't want to live in, and as someone who loves Google products and has a lot of my life wrapped up in them, I'm actually starting to worry about getting infected with Typhoid myself just through accidental association.

That's what happens when you build a store architecture where its the only way to release an app. When stores were introduced offering built-in DRM, not allowing native apps, and only providing a license to use the software, it was only a matter of time before these things happened. Having no control or ownership of what you put on your machine was a death sentence. Problem is, people love stores like Steam and frequently defend it when its nothing more than a Google App store. Despite having no ownership of their games, draconian return policy, and games permanently locked to your account.

I own over nearly 100 games on Steam, mostly bought on sales. Despite the tons of titles I bought, I miss the experience of actually owning a copy of the game, along with the box and manuals that came with it. More importantly though, I think it's scary that Valve can one day decide to totally ban a user from their purchased game because they didn't like the behavior or actions of an account holder (e.g. cheating in a Valve game or account getting hacked).

Or you initiate a chargeback over an illegitimate or otherwise dispute on charging or on bad claim of product.

Then they nuke your whole account.

> That's what happens when you build a store architecture where its the only way to release an app.

Fortunately, with Android, the Play Store is not the only way to release an app.

True. But that's the only place where people usually download apps. It's very rare that a company will release an android package and it requires changing security permissions, at the very least, temporarily to install it outside the play store. Also, the play store offers a built in revenue model + exposure that selling directly from a site would be difficult to generate. I guess you can chalk it up to the general ignorance of the public regarding security and non-app store installation.

Back in the Symbian and J2ME store days, there was actual support to talk to.

Sounds like F-Droid and/or self-signed downloadable .apks are the immediate alternatives, and perhaps if that becomes enough of a percentage of app installs, somebody in the Play Store command chain will realize they're shooting the golden goose.

We can hope?

At that point, what's to say they won't lock down the OS to eliminate those alternatives?

Amazon was banning 3rd party sellers residing in the same building as some of their previous offenders for almost a decade already, so Google has still some stuff to do to catch up with them... With bot customer support they are on the same level of usefulness. After a certain point big companies start behaving like big companies; one can only hope there will be another stream of profitable creativity allowing their new competitors to rise with nicer attitude towards customers until inevitable fall to degeneracy after reaching a certain size threshold.