Google is building a digital lock into Android. It's a very bad idea and I hate it.
The excellent organizers at keepandroidopen.org encouraged me to complain to the Competition Bureau of Canada.
What I sent wasn't well edited but it captures my anger. Please send your own!
I found this website on the Keep Android Open petition site.
https://keepandroidopen.org/
Google built Android as an open platform, and used the promise of that openness to built an ecosystem that had a expectation of the openness continuing. During the critical period where Android was gaining market share, people and companies chose to purchase Android devices and build Android software because this openness gave them agency.
Google has announced that they are altering the deal. And telling us that we should pray that they don't alter it further. They're requiring Canadians send our IDs and pay fees to them to develop software for the platform we invested in specifically because we didn't have that obligation.
I would like an intervention where this process change is blocked for Canadian developers and users. In particular Google has the capacity to not enforce this policy on Canadians (either users or developers) and we need to demand that. All it takes is telling Google that this policy change is anti-competitive, and that they must not apply it in Canada.
It is anti-competitive because it gives Google a technical capacity to block Canadian individuals from using software that Google dislikes, and also the capacity to stop distribution of software that Google doesn't like.
As one example, they will be vulnerable to being strong-armed by the US government into blocking products that distribute generic pharmaceutical products in Canada to Canadians. Or they may block comedy products that hurt the feelings of their leadership, such as the Beaverton. Or they might block products that speak truth to power.
They will also have the capacity to block Canadian-made software for defence systems to favour either US alternatives, or more corrupt alternatives. Google is a vendor to the US military and will respond swiftly to financial demands.
Block this policy change now before they wrap their cold metal hands around our necks.