> Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
Or you could analyze this at the actual face value: the damage to Google’s brand caused by malware campaigns, especially faux-banking apps robbing people in some regions, is greater than the damage from making sideloading harder for some edge case users.
Not everything is a giant conspiracy; this move has always looked pretty clear cut to me from Google’s standpoint and I’ve never really seen any evidence to the contrary.
Or you could analyze this at the actual face value: the damage to Google’s brand caused by malware campaigns, especially faux-banking apps robbing people in some regions, is greater than the damage from making sideloading harder for some edge case users.
Not everything is a giant conspiracy; this move has always looked pretty clear cut to me from Google’s standpoint and I’ve never really seen any evidence to the contrary.