>only Google Play Protect (part of the Play Store IIRC) can uninstall apps from user's devices with no interaction.

That sounds horrible. Why can a store decide to delete an app with no prior notice?

But it does seem Google has given more freedom to other apps to install apps. I guess it comes down to if that's still too many clicks or too fear mongering to count as "competitive".

It’s a security feature. They’ve had this feature for more than a decade [1].

It allows them to remotely remove any malicious app from Android devices without any user intervention.

1: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2752902/google-remotel...

Worse than that, I've had it unilaterally block legitimate third-party apps I've installed from F-Droid. Then since I've disabled it, it constantly nags me to re-enable it so it can re-delete my third-party apps. If you want to talk about anti-competitive, Play "Protect" should be where you start.

In my experience Google Play Protect can be disabled, and shows a warning an app might be "Harmful" and sometimes prompts to Uninstall or Ignore the warning, afaik no unprompted uninstalls

> only Google's offering is allowed to update or install apps in the background

Not anymore, since Android 12 (2021).

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-12-alternative-app-st...

You're right! I thought I'd heard something about that, but couldn't quite remember :) From your linked article though:

> in response to mounting pressure from Epic Games and government regulators

Just because it came out before the judgement doesn't mean it wasn't because of the court case. And frankly, needing to be sued to do the not-a-monopoly thing isn't exactly a great look.

Maybe I'm just grouchy because I'll never get to use it though - BlackBerry stopped making handsets, so I'm using either the last great physical keyboard (subjective, but true IMO) while being "stuck" on Android 8.1, or GNU+Linux à la Pinephone Pro.