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0 pointscolllectorof5y ago0 comments

>Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like? (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.)

Absolutely. They've done similar things with similar apps. You just have to pay some attention to see the pattern.

Let's take video for example. They Kicked LBRY client off Play store not so long ago. (It eventually got reinstated.) They permanently banned BitChute app. Not app-related, but currently Rumble is suing Google for manipulating video search results in favor of YouTube. Look up the details, they are quite interesting.

Meanwhile, Google has an agreement with all Android hardware providers that forces them to pre-install YouTube and make it non-removable.

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colllectorofOP5y ago

And then you occasionally see more subtle stuff like this:

"Since Android 8.0 Oreo, Google doesn't allow apps to run in the background anymore, requiring all apps which were previously keeping background connection to exclusively use its Firebase push messaging service."

https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas...

walrus015y ago

how is this handled for SIP softphones that can run persistently in the background, in a direct SIP or SIP-over-TLS connection to a server? for instance:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.linphone&h...

that's just a random example I thought of since I use it, but I can also think of a lot of other Android apps that I'm fairly sure aren't using any client-server communications mediated through google firebase, yet they continue to function while backgrounded on android 10 and 11.

Un1corn5y ago

I'm not sure how Linphone is doing it but all the apps I used that required to run in the background were required to show a notification at all time.

This is a terrible UX, my notification center is useless because I always have those apps in there (KDEConnect and Syncthing for example)

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vbsteven5y ago

VoIP has always been treated a bit differently to regular apps on both platforms. I vaguely remember about 10 years ago both iOS and Android had special permissions specifically for VoIP apps to run in the background.

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rstuart41335y ago

Android has it's own SIP stack. It's even exposed in the standard Android phone dialler from Google. In the settings for that app look under "calling accounts".

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/sip

I haven't looked, but I'm sure just like Firebase, services get a special exemption to receive SIP notifications.

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