Why Did Samsung Take Control of My Banking App? Inside Android’s ‘Clobbering’ Dilemma

The oddest app update in my 16 years of owning smartphones happened last November .

For years , Android users have expressed fear and confusion about apps being updated by unexpected stores.

Google has maintained from the onset of its fight with Epic that fiddling with well established boundaries of the Android industry could leave users worse off.

Android 14 began allowing app stores to declare themselves as the exclusive source of updates of specified apps .

Users can opt into apps being updated by any app store only if they accept a message warning that mixing stores “could affect an app’s functionality” Users who want to preserve the current version of an app because they prefer it may be disappointed if they turn off updates from one store.

At a hearing before Donato this week , attorneys and technical experts argued over whether Google should have months or potentially more than a year to comply with the proposed requirements.

Donato said it would take him at least a couple of weeks to finalize his order.

He suggested Epic and Google each appoint one of their technical experts, and the pair would jointly select someone from the app development industry to join them.