[RndTbl] On forcing people to get Google accounts

[Brian Lowe]

On Friday, November 4, 2022 8:11:19 A.M. CDT Brian Lowe wrote:

> One thing I have is a copy of Android x86 installed on a computer. It's
> Android compiled for Intel hardware, with the additional improvement that
> it's not locked down.
> 
> Looking at it now, that's another potential way to get stuff from Play:
> download it using that system and transfer the APK to the phone. Yes, I
> still need a Google account, but it's tied only to that system and not to
> my phone, and spends most of its life powered off.

Well, that idea's a no-go. The only way to get stuff from Google Play is to use the Google Play 
app, and Android x86 doesn't have it. I tried the Aurora store on this platform and it doesn't 
work either. It hangs when attempting to log in anonymously, and shuts down when attempting 
to log in using a Google account.

There's the microG project, which aims to reproduce the proprietary Google stuff with an open 
source implementation. I'm not sure if that will give me access to the Play store on Android 
x86.

What I don't like here is ANDROID IS SUPPOSED TO BE OPEN (open source, anyway), but 
Google has really gone out of their way to ensure most people cannot use it without tying a 
Google account to their Android device. *That's* user-hostile.

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