I did some surface-level research, but I couldn’t find any country that explicitly or publicly requested this from Google.
While I saw countries discussing the issue, none of them seemed to ask Google directly to only allow authorized third party apps.
That makes me think this is entirely a power move. If those countries had actually asked Google to step in and make phones safer, there are other ways to do that. And if they did explicitly request this particular solution, then why isn’t it being implemented only in those countries?
This is a software-based solution—just like Apple limits certain features to specific regions, Google could do the same and restrict it to the countries that require it.
While I saw countries discussing the issue, none of them seemed to ask Google directly to only allow authorized third party apps.
That makes me think this is entirely a power move. If those countries had actually asked Google to step in and make phones safer, there are other ways to do that. And if they did explicitly request this particular solution, then why isn’t it being implemented only in those countries?
This is a software-based solution—just like Apple limits certain features to specific regions, Google could do the same and restrict it to the countries that require it.