Well, I am pretty convinced most of the mentioned issues are actually intentional design choices.
Google does want neither the users, nor the app owners to have the best experience, but to control their actions in a way that generates the most revenue for Google.
Prime example for Enshitification.From Google’s point of view, it must not change any of the issues, as everything is working perfectly for them already.
One thing that bothers me is the reviews. For some reason, those Google Play reviews are barely helpful at all.
Gamification of reviews is one of the biggest reasons for CI/CD existing. Releasing pointless version bumps with no code changes on most apps. The whole update psychology needs to change, in general.
It’s funny how American oligarchs wax theatrical about “da AI revolution” and yet they can’t even solve basic issues in an application store or follow their own publishing guidelines (Twitter/Grok CSAM features).
Bunch of liars and criminals.
Sorry, best they can do is kill the little competition that managed to survive.
You can use a much better organized front-end instead with optional account login.
Step one: remove Android and install an open source OS
Go away!
People with budgetary constraints are out of luck, there.
Step one: remove Android and install an open source OSp
isn’t Android open source?
Even if you have Lineage or Graphene, you may need to have access to boogle play store. In which case, a better advice would be to use Aurora instead
Android is NOT open source. AOSP is, but the android distributions you get on a retail phone add proprietary and closed source features atop AOSP. It is at best open-core but even that is questionable given the release cadence of AOSP
you’re right. thanks for the precision
At its core, the operating system is known as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is free and open-source software (FOSS) primarily licensed under the Apache License. However, most devices run the proprietary Android version developed by Google, which ships with additional proprietary closed-source software pre-installed, most notably Google Mobile Services (GMS), which includes core apps such as Google Chrome, the digital distribution platform Google Play, and the associated Google Play Services development platform. Firebase Cloud Messaging is used for push notifications. While AOSP is free, the “Android” name and logo are trademarks of Google, who restrict the use of Android branding on “uncertified” products. The majority of smartphones based on AOSP run Google’s ecosystem—which is known simply as Android—some with vendor-customized user interfaces and software suites, for example One UI. Numerous modified distributions exist, which include competing Amazon Fire OS, community-developed LineageOS; the source code has also been used to develop a variety of Android distributions on a range of other devices, such as Android TV for televisions, Wear OS for wearables, and Meta Horizon OS for VR headsets.
Wouldn’t know, I don’t use the Play Store on my Android phone.
Yeah. I have a few necessary apps only available through Google store, but with the exception of installing those, I never use Google play.
I opened it the other day and it’s unusable for browsing apps, whereas I regularly open and browse F-Droid for new apps.
What do you use?
F-Droid
If you need apps from the Play Store you can use Aurora Store. It has a much cleaner UI.
