Apple threatens to kick Parlor out of the App Store unless they “moderate”

[pinzgauer]

I’d argue that web services have become as essential as traditional telephone services once were and as essential as electricity, thus are now in the realm of public utilities which should be treated as such.


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That is absolutely the right model to think of. Internet access including DNS as well as cloud services like AWS (Amazon Web services) effectively need to be regulated like utilities as they are de facto but necessary monopolies.

[vicious_cb]

Many of us side load apps onto android. But as mentioned, Google can disable it, and you have to be careful as you could load and infected APK.

Google is already pretty restrictive on what it allows into the play store. It's actually pretty hard to get an app on there.

There is some promising development in a Googleless Android device, and there's also a Linux based phone. But you'll lose a lot of polish and reliability doing so initially.

You can just degoogle your phone.

[pinzgauer]

You can just degoogle your phone.

DeGoogling is entirely different than having a functional phone with a reasonable set of services based on generic Android.

I've got a couple of different type of older tablets that I've put community ported Android on to extend their life and it's a wonderful thing.

They come with no Google services unless you choose to side load them.

Back to my earlier comment, the issue is you have to find alternate services to what you normally get from Google. Which some exist, but others not in an integrated form. Google maps is a prime example.

Running bing in a browser or open street map is nowhere near the same as the level of usability that Google map / Android Auto offers as an example.