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Google Android

Google Play Store Cracks Down on Outdated Apps (theverge.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Google is preparing to limit the availability of outdated apps on the Play Store, the company has announced. The Verge reports: From November 1st, all existing apps in the store should aim to target an API level within two years of the latest major Android OS release. If they don't, Google says it'll place limits on which users are able to discover or install them. The changes are meant to ensure that software available from the Play Store makes use of Android's latest privacy and security features. Device owners "expect to realize the full potential of all the privacy and security protections Android has to offer," Google product management director Krish Vitaldevara writes in a blog post. "Expanding our target level API requirements will protect users from installing older apps that may not have these protections in place."
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Google Play Store Cracks Down on Outdated Apps More

Google Play Store Cracks Down on Outdated Apps

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  • Shouldnt users have the right to use old software if they so choose?

    • Re:User rights (Score:5, Informative)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday April 07, 2022 @12:35PM (#62425766)

      Correct, and they still can. That much hasn't changed. Google are just saying they wont promote them if they fall behind the standards on new privacy and security APIs.

      • Specifically, there are a lot of app developers who refuse to update or switch to newer APIs so they can take advantage of older lax security settings. This is more closing a privacy loophole, not getting rid of old software.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        What about apps that don't communicate externally that uses an older API?

        I have just one app on the store and it's a calculator that works entirely standalone and isn't doing any external communication. It's just a calculator useful for people working with radio equipment to estimate the radiated power from an antenna given the power of a transmitter and other factors. Named ErpCalc [google.com].

        Not sure if I have to rebuild the app against the latest API just because of this or if the rules only applies to apps accessi

      • Actually no. RTFA.

        "aim to target an API level within two years of the latest major Android OS release. If they don't, Google says it'll place limits on which users are able to discover or install them."

      • "Promote"? The article says "discover or install". That implies apps will be hidden so you can't find them even when explicitly searching, and downloads will be restricted.

        These days, I've seen plenty of things stop working for no damn reason, so pardon me if I'm not as optimistic as you are. Remember, Google was the company that helpfully de-indexed all Flash content from their search engine, despite a number of Flash replacements (like Ruffle) being available.

        • That's my fear as well, given Google's long track record of killing things off, today it's "not discoverable", tomorrow it's "won't run any more, sorry, buy a new one". A lot of the stuff on my phone hasn't had updates in 2+ years, often because it talks to some exotic device or system where the software never needs updates once written because it Just Works. I've already had perfectly functional stuff stop working purely through being held hostage to some braindead Google agenda, and this is a sign that

    • Shouldnt users have the right to use old software if they so choose?

      They should. The problem is users aren't smart enough to work out the issue. They just download and install blindly without ever looking if an app is up to date and then bitch and moan about a bad experience it causes.

      E.g. Gentle Alarm, and app that is in the app store and can be downloaded today, but which does not use the current alarm API meaning that any alarm you set in it simply does not function. The app has been abandoned for well over 5 years now and has no place being offered in the Playstore.

  • There's always a nice alternative like https://f-droid.org/ [f-droid.org] (this + https://lineageos.org/ [lineageos.org] makes Android so great!)

  • Windows (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Thursday April 07, 2022 @12:31PM (#62425748) Homepage

    And here I am, still running Windows programs released in 1998 on my Windows 10 machine without any fuss or restrictions.

    • Much like how, with this announcement you still will be able to use your old apps on your android phone too.

      But between you and me, i highly doubt your gonna be seeing un-updated windows 98 apps on the microsoft app store.

      • Except when you get a new Android phone you won't be able to reinstall those apps anymore from the Play Store. Instead, you're going to have to enable a third-party app store and/or download and install a .apk file.

        So, yeah... techies will be able to use their "legacy" apps, but those who are less tech-savvy will be locked out of them.

        • Re:Windows (Score:4, Informative)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Thursday April 07, 2022 @01:31PM (#62425962)

          Except when you get a new Android phone you won't be able to reinstall those apps anymore from the Play Store.

          Why lie about something that anyone who read the article can confirm is a lie? From TFA: "Secondly, Google says users will be able to re-download and install any apps they’ve previously downloaded from the Play Store. "

          Also from the blog post from Google linked in TFA: "Current users of older apps who have previously installed the app from Google Play will continue to be able to discover, re-install, and use the app on any device running any Android OS version that the app supports. "

          • "That the app supports" being the keyword. Who's going to take the time to recertify a bunch of 5+ year old applications to make sure that they work with Android 12?

            • I thought all this "virtual machine" and "container" stuff was supposed to fix those problems. Funny how the easier it is to run old software forever, the shorter product lifespans get.

              I don't recall having to re-certify all the 20-year-old applications and games I can run on my Windows box, especially the even older stuff I can run on emulators.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by EvilSS ( 557649 )
              No it isn’t. Google’s policy change here has nothing to do with that. That would be the case either way. It is up to the dev to update their apps. It also has nothing to do with the lie you tried to perpetuate. Nice try though. Liar.

    • Well if you want to run a program released in 1988 though, you may have some issues, where you probably will need a middleman app such as DOSBox or an emulator to help out.
      If you are using Windows 10 for 64 bit systems. Then you no longer have access to the older 16bit windows apps, without a compatibility level. 1993 ish is when a 32bit compatibility software came to play.

      However I remember last Decade at work when we upgraded our systems from XP 32bit to Windows 7 64 bit, there were some old Apps that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      And here I am, still running Windows programs released in 1998 on my Windows 10 machine without any fuss or restrictions.

      32 bit Windows 10 can run apps going back to 1991 or so, and I think other than a dialog, you can run even Windows 1.x and 2.x apps. The dialog basically says you really should get an updated version of the program because of so much upheaval in the APIs.

      Those apps can run on 64-bit, but only through an emulation core like WINE VDM which emulates the 16-bit processor, but passes on the AP

    • And here I am, still running Windows programs released in 1998 on my Windows 10 machine without any fuss or restrictions.

      And here you will be tomorrow complaining about Windows bloat. Okay maybe you won't, but if there's one thing we learnt in the Windows source code leak years ago it's that MS puts and insane amount of cruft in its OS to support backwards compatibility and outdated software.

      Makes you wonder if Windows would be much better if it didn't try and run programs released in 1998.

      Unlike Windows Android APIs have changed a lot over the years. Apps which don't use modern permission APIs are borderline non-functional.

    • Lucky you. First time I installed Windows 10 on a test machine for evaluation, the installer informed me 11 applications had to be removed since they were "incompatible" with Windows 10. I wasn't asked permission, I wasn't presented with options, I wasn't given the chance to search for updates, the applications weren't just disabled... the files were outright DELETED.

      I tried to revert to Win7 just to see what would happen, and, unsurprisingly, it failed. I re-imaged the system back to Win7 and won't even

  • Or is this just "Our bat, our ball, our rules!"? Seems to me, it's the developer's responsibility to manage and maintain code. Google's effectively asserting ownership of all code in their walled garden, dictating (so far, in general terms) what developers must do to be permitted to publish their work in Google's private demesne.

    What happens when the required API breaks something that still works just fine with the older API? I don't know if it's happened in Google's walled garden yet; but at this rate,

    • What happens when the required API breaks something that still works just fine with the older API? I don't know if it's happened in Google's walled garden yet

      Android 10 tightened W^X restrictions to make the user's home directory noexec. This broke Termux. (Source [github.com])

      • Which is mostly a good thing. Without that, couldn't an app download executable code and run it without going through app store review? Kind of defeats the purpose of having a review process.

        • Termux is basically a GNU userland, like that of Debian, ported to Android. How practical would it be for the maintainer of a GNU system that runs on Android to upload every application in Debian to Google Play Store as a separate app that the user must manually install?

          Also consider the use case of obtaining and using a compiler, such as GCC or Clang or rustc, on a device. After the user compiles a program, would GCC have to package the compiled program as an APK suitable for installing from unknown source

          • Do I think that a sideloaded app should have different options? Yes. But let's be clear that this is de facto sideloading even if the app came from a store. So it's better if it's not in a store where it has the appearance of being vetted.

    • Yes it is costing them money.
      Perhaps not with a particular single App that is out of date, but with a bunch of out of date apps.
      1. Apps that are running on an old platform, means Google will need to keep backward compatibility which over time gets more and more expensive, as there is a lot of rework to make sure all the old versions are compatible.
      2. Security, Older Android systems were based on slower systems. To get the OS to work there were a lot of shortcuts were made, and security was basicly at face

      • What? Since when does Google do this. Google does not make old apps compatible with newer versions of Android. Old apps either work with the current version or not. In fact that's how ALL SOFTWARE works. New OS is released and it's left to the software manufacturers to make sure their existing programs work with the latest OS or release a new version that does.

        So no it does not cost Google money. You can stop shilling for Google now.
  • While well intentioned this could lead to more e-waste. For example I have a couple of Nexus 7 tablets that are over a decade old but still work fine. I tend to use them as status displays. I wanted to use one to show the status of a Tesla Powerwall but it is too old for Tesla's app. I found another app that was simpler and does the job fine. With this change by Google that app developer would be less likely to support older devices and my best option becomes to bin a perfectly good working tablet and

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      Any apps you have already installed, you'll continue to be able to use. The issue that could make you throw away your tablet is with newer apps that don't support an old version of Android, not the other way around.

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