On Android you can easily sideload apps. So there is a choice.

I understand that 90% of people get their apps exclusively from the Play Store but that is not because Google is evil. Its because people prefer one store were they can find everything: the supermarket model.

And not just the consumers, but it would seem the producers too.

By choice, I do not have a Play Store account and wherever possible install apps only from F-Droid. However, there are (rare) times where I want to install a free (as in beer) closed source app. However, the publisher only chooses to make the app available via the Play Store. I would really, really like a direct apk download. I appreciate this approach is not for every end user and some people are scared of the "warning" messages Android displays when installing apps directly. Nonetheless, it would be really nice to have the choice and I don't see it as so much extra effort on the publisher's side.

Absolutely. If developers don't want one app store to dominate the marketplace they have to publish in multiple places. Otherwise what can they expect is going to happen? Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

My previous employer made it a condition of their BYOD mobile policy that I wouldn’t side load apps onto my device.

So even though it’s technically possible, it’s not always a going to happen.

There’s also side loading as a malware vector. If you do side load, you need to remember to turn off non-AppStore access immediately after.

"On Android you can easily sideload apps. So there is a choice."

If you develop apps to make money as a business this is not realistic. If the user can only side load your apps you probably have shrunken your potential customer base by 95%.

Managing app update becomes a problem outside Play store.

I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now and I've not noticed the difference. Stack Overflow, MDN are common search results while the occasional blog post also find its way into the result..

Does DuckDuckGo operate an app store that reaches most of mobile users worldwide? Why are you talking about the search engine?

> Why are you talking about the search engine?

Because the grandparent comment was about the search engine.

Try not being a mobile app developer? A bit less snarky:

- Develop mobile apps for a company rather than sell your own on Play/App store. - Develop non-mobile apps. - Not-app programming (business automation, infra, embedded, etc). - Get out of programming entirely.

This is basically the same message for all the other displaced/disrupted jobs (coal miners, bank clerks, lift operators, cashiers). Nobody owes anybody a livelihood for a fairly narrow/specific field. Especially not in "mobile app development" which 10 years ago was close to non-existent as as job title.

Publishing on the web or iOS is always a choice.

It's pretty much the same issue on iOS, we only have two crappy (and poorly managed) walled garden in the mobile world.

If you want to lose most of your audience, sure.