The barrier to having people install your app is a couple of taps
Not entirely true. Google has a history of making it as difficult as possible for other app stores to run without outright locking them out as possible.
Citation needed. I just tried installing the Epic store on my Samsung and it was literally a couple of taps, not even an actual warning - just a friendly dialog box asking me to allow my browser to install apps and that’s it.
Used to be much, much worse. They used to force you to go find a setting called something like ‘allow apps from outside the Play Store’ and tick it, show you warning screens, then when you tried to install an app from it, it would take you out of the store to say ‘do you want to install this from an untrusted location?’
Edit: and that’s before we get onto the subject of Play Protect, which is used to wipe applications from phones that are contrary to Google’s interests but not actual malware.
Not entirely true. Google has a history of making it as difficult as possible for other app stores to run without outright locking them out as possible.
Citation needed. I just tried installing the Epic store on my Samsung and it was literally a couple of taps, not even an actual warning - just a friendly dialog box asking me to allow my browser to install apps and that’s it.
Used to be much, much worse. They used to force you to go find a setting called something like ‘allow apps from outside the Play Store’ and tick it, show you warning screens, then when you tried to install an app from it, it would take you out of the store to say ‘do you want to install this from an untrusted location?’
Edit: and that’s before we get onto the subject of Play Protect, which is used to wipe applications from phones that are contrary to Google’s interests but not actual malware.