That's the funny part.

They do stuff they want to prohibit to other developers because "safety".

But we all know that Google can do massively more harm than scammers pushing their scammy apps to a few hundreds people.

For example, in today's news "Google hit with EU antitrust investigation into its spam policy".

There's a bit of irony in it and a lot of hypocrisy, IMO.

Correct, I mean install the app.

Sideloading is the corporate jargon for "installing an app".

funnily enough, I am installing google drive for computers right now (macOS), I had to download a .pkg and basically sideload the app, which is not published on the Apple Store

Why the double standard, dear Google?

Autocratic Albania banned by law ads on YouTube so if you are in Albania (or your VPN is - wink! wink!) you get to watch YouTube without ads legally

I, too, hate those autocratic countries were government act for the good of the people, instead of ruling in favour of greedy billionaires

80-year-old nontechnical self can easily operate machines and devices that are much more complex and easily more dangerous than a smartphone.

And yet we're here pretending that those same people will install apps without even thinking about it.

Careless people are careless, we know that, we don't make them safer by treating everyone else like toddlers with a gun in their hands.

I want to distribute apps (someone might also want to simply sell them), not publish them

I don't need a publisher, internet is a publishing media already

> you don't have the right to publish to the android platform

then let me install an alternative OS on the HW i legally bought and own or pay me back.

> the harms caused by malware and malicious actors

life is full of people doing harms and malicious actors, but we don't let Google or any other company gatekeep our lives