Hello Dear Readers
Today's article will not be funny as Luftie usually used to write, and I will not joke here. This article is going to have an severe tone and leave you with severe thoughts and concerns to consider on an personal level.
I'm not a fear-mongering "journalist" (although I don't reckon I'm one, but my work allows me to call myself so), I hate spreading fear because that belongs to garbage media 🗑️ like Linkedin, Instagram, Youtube or X (twitter). So if you would feel threatened or would get anxious, that's not the purpose here 😌.
I may be emotional and sometimes seem frustrated and sick in this article, but this is coming directly from me, what I think about this all.
In order not to prelong the article, I want to briefly emphasize what will this article be about:
Because of those 2 topics, I decided to firmly write an article so that every developer here sees it.
google Android Monopoly Act
I called it this way, because it is exactly what Sundar Pichai with his fellows plan to introduce. Primarily our Hindi friend stated that
This update is about to reduce the amount of malware in Android eco-system.
Logically deducting, google should block it's self. Ok, what Pichai said, is only a cover for real incentives.
That sounds great in PR, but the real incentive is control, money and power. Power to invigilate and make users and developers obedient, just as you were a dog. You have no other choice to use your phone with android based OS, than android phone with google Play Services support and only official app-store. Otherwise ? Otherwise you will starve and be excluded from the herd.
This is the harsh truth, willy nilly. Regardless what size of foil cap are you planning to buy for me. I'm going to bark about this so that everyone sees it, my account of dev.to will get blocked, because I allegedly would have posted violent content towards one or another, which is not true.
Never have I encouraged to violent acts and neither will I. I only encouraged to resist things that are pertaining us, our privacy, our freedom.
What Pichai really wants ?
He wants to:
Deprive Android users of choice, whether users want to download the app from open-source app store or official one
Importantly, Pichai wants to decide for a user what OS they should have, leaving simultaneously no option than official android, therefore custom ROMs users suffer and are vulnerable to have issues with usage.
But what's most important for us, us developers. It deprives us also of freedom of choice.
It prohibits us to choose where we want to publish our app to be downloaded, because there will be only one choice.
It will drain our wallets financially and I know a lot of ambitious developers, mainly from from Africa, who are developing open-source projects on android, and they cherish the fact they do not have to pay 25 $ to google to be able to launch the app in official app store.
It extends the invigilation methods on developers, because if a developer would deploy their app that would prolly not appeal to the any government-institution or google themselves, google has direct access to who you are and you are treated as criminal from day 0. Why ?
Because the rules are that, in order to be able to deploy apps to their app store, you also need to pass your ID to google now.
I committed this massive failure back 2024, I uploaded my ID and I'm ashamed. Ashamed because I promised myself back then already to start taking care about privacy. Though due to my desire to make my start-up appear and succeed at all cost, I violated even my personal rules, I was trying to be Mr. Pie (Perfect In Everything), but I failed tremendously. But that's the past and I don't give a single shit about it.
As for devs, I see that we are exposed on another threat, namely censorship. Yes you heard correctly, now as developers have only single source of release of their apps, they might challenge censorship issues. So your app can be taken down, removed and you might be incarcerated, sued or whatever legal actions would they take towards you.
Another Issues I see, are onboarding issues and console usage, to be honest I was developing mobile apps for 2 years and was always confused with the console and sometimes lost quarters to find the button or feature I want to use. It's highly counter intuitive.
Your google play developer account might get suspended from whatever reason, interrupting your work and write emails to unlock the account, coming along with the fact they know your address, they have your ID and know what you look like, they might sue you, and the law is easy "Money Talks", whoever has better lawyers, whoever has more money, there one will be innocent.
It ruins the entire idea of open-source android apps, because noone can download it without the app being required to appear in a google store (even for testers), without complying to google's restrictive requirements before publishing, which causes waste of time.
My Take on google
google is indeed a big company and are earning a lot of money and produce and build phenomenal technology. The question is whether they earn so much due to lack of better products or is it because of the mail monopoly and the setup by default and regular users do not even think about using other tools like email provider.
I would say it's because of their oligopolistic (together with Apple) dominance over mobile phones OS and because they bribe manufacturers to put that google's android on their phones.
As you can already suspect and see after me writing name google with lowercase, I don't love google and genuinely condemn their actions and their company as well.
I can't really believe how anti-human this corporation is. In order to get to someone from any support you're redirected to FAQ-section where finding answer will take you ages.
And if there is already a human, they will answer you at fastest in 2 days. And also the responses from them are written in such way you wish to become a terrorist and visit google's headquarter in person.
Me myself removed the account from google play Developer Console, and took back my money.
Which also was not so easy, because I had done the transaction from an already non-existing bank-account and bank that does not exist anymore and requested to send the refund to my current account.
After a week they sent the money back to me. They are 3 trillion+ $ company and they have issues to send the refund on different account.
EU x google Data Sharing Act
This one is quite fresh, so let's describe what's going on.
The European Commission issued preliminary findings on April 16, 2026, proposing that google must allow third-party search engines and AI chatbots to access its search data under the Digital Markets Act framework.
What's that shit 😮 for ?
The EU promises to ensure that "data is a key input for online search and for developing new services, including AI." The stated aim is to:
Level the competitive playing field so rivals can challenge google Search's dominance
Allow competitors to optimize their services using the same data inputs google has
Prevent market foreclosure and "practices that risk closing markets or limiting choice"
Ensure fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access to search data with transparent pricing parameters
What Data Must Be Shared ?
google would be required to share the following search data with competitors:
Search rankings data — how google ranks search results
Query data — the actual searches users perform
Click data — which results users click on
View data — which results users view without clicking
AI-related data — equally effective access to data used by google's own AI services like Gemini
The data must be made available to eligible "data beneficiaries", which include third-party search engines and AI chatbots with search capabilities.
The Specific Requirements Under Consideration
The EU's proposed measures would regulate:
Eligibility criteria — which companies qualify as data beneficiaries
Scope of data sharing — exactly what data must be shared
Technical means and frequency — how often and through what systems data is transferred
Data anonymization protocols — measures to strip personal information while maintaining data usefulness
From google's side there is of course opposition, however I treat it personally as PR only.
Clare Kelly, google's senior competition counsel, stated:
"Hundreds of millions of Europeans trust google with their most sensitive searches — including private questions about their health, family, and finances — and the Commission's proposal would force us to hand this data over to third parties, with dangerously ineffective privacy protections."
Ms. Kelly notices the sensitiveness of searches and private data, but on their own they state in the policy that they see all of your emails and thus own your sensitive information. Which than is processed and misused.
Pricing parameters — fair pricing mechanisms for data access
Access governance processes — rules for how beneficiaries use shared data
Privacy Concerns: EU Data-Sharing Mandate and Potential Threats
The proposal generates unprecedented privacy risks for EU citizens, despite framing the measure as pro-competition.
Below I listed down what threats I see coming from this data-sharing act:
Search queries reveal the most intimate aspects of human life—medical conditions, mental health struggles, financial desperation, sexual orientation, relationship crises, and illegal curiosities—information people would never voluntarily share with multiple corporations.
Once this data is distributed to "eligible data beneficiaries" such as Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Amazon, users lose any meaningful control over their most sensitive information.
The EU's proposed anonymization safeguards are insufficient: academic research consistently demonstrates that anonymized search datasets can be re-identified when cross-referenced with other data these companies already control (email patterns from Microsoft, device usage from Apple, social graphs from Meta).
Real-world threat scenarios I could think of include:
A person searching for depression treatment, suicidal ideation, and debt relief being microtargeted by predatory lenders or high-interest financial services;
Someone researching gender dysphoria or LGBTQ+ resources in conservative EU regions having that data sold or breached, exposing them to discrimination or legal risk;
A woman searching for abortion information in restrictive countries having her data shared across borders with law enforcement;
Aggregated "anonymous" search patterns revealing population-level health crises, enabling governments or insurers to deny coverage to high-risk groups;
Data breaches at any of the multiple vendors now holding search records exposing millions simultaneously rather than concentrating risk in one company.
The proposal does not grant users transparency into who accesses their data, control over sharing, or meaningful consent mechanisms—instead, it mandates data distribution as a condition of market access. This transforms the surveillance apparatus from monopolistic to oligopolistic, spreading vulnerability across more companies, jurisdictions, and profit incentives while maintaining the same fundamental loss of user autonomy.
Timeline
Public Consultation Phase: Interested parties (including google, competitors, and civil society) can submit comments until May 1, 2026.
Binding Decision: The Commission expects to finalize its ruling by July 27, 2026, which will determine the exact scope and terms of data sharing
This represents a major escalation in EU antitrust enforcement targeting Big Tech, with significant implications for how competitive search and AI development will operate in Europe.
Developer Request For Action (DRFA)
Due to the surging surveillance and more threats to our digital privacy. I call you, you developers, who are the core of every digital product and service. Because it's thanks to you that we use apps in the app-stores. It's all your work spent on every app, extension, website, software comes from a developer.
That's why if you're actively creating or are just about to join mobile dev, I request you to:
- Not sign up to google play developer console account and remove your account from google play developer console as soon as possible.
There are many alternative solutions to have deployed the app instead directly on the app store, one needs only to truly want to implement them.
You can run a push notification campaign and in-app alerts saying about the problem and that you plan to move to open-source app-stores where you will continue.
Make people aware of the actual threat and problem. Will you loose some customers ? Sure, but you will gain other ones.
- Talk to your regulatory institutions about the issues
I recently have distributed 500+ email messages to MPs and requested them for taking action pertaining the European Union implementation and plan do so either for the google's psychopathic desires.
If you use X, feel free to follow, like and repost.
- Fill out the survey where you oppose the update
The more opposition there appears, the higher the probability that this update will not be implemented. So please go and fill out the survey, tell google what you think of this through their own developer verification survey.
- Visit Keep Android Open Website
There is well described, why the google's update violates privacy with their actions, if I didn't convince you, perhaps the website will.
Talk other developers and organizations out of signing up.
Add the FreeDroidWarn library to your apps to warn users.
Run a website? Add the countdown banner.
Summary
One could argue, why to even bother, it won't give anything anyways. It's wrong. Chat Control got revoked, due to public pressure, there are a lot of cases were pressure simply works. So can it be now as well.
That's it for today, if you are mobile-dev please consider the measurements from the article. Don't forget to like and share it with friends.
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Thank you very much for any support, also leave the comment down below: What do you think of google ? Do you like the direction they head towards ?
Till next one ;D
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