I feel like googles hands may be getting forced on this. There is a growing authoritarian movement across the globe and android sideloading was one of the ways to avoid surveillance as that info was mostly private and offline. I wonder if they are being forced by shithole regimes (like USA now) to go in on the government verifying all apps or get blocked in that country for bypassing "national security." (Wouldn't surprise me if the UK and USA were two of those countries)

Remember LaLiGa said last year that Google should have the ability to remotely remove piracy apps from someone's device without their permission?