There’s no good outcome from all this, petitions and other stuff to prevent Google from locking it more will just keep Google in control as they always had. The “open-source” word when comes to Android is just an illusion, if it was up to the community to contribute, things would be different since the beginning. They surely love the idea of developers around the world being able to help them fix and report bugs since the code is open, but they won’t allow the same developers give their opinion on how the platform should be.

There are a few outcomes from all this:

1. Google back out and things stay as they are, what now? They’re still in control, Android is very problematic without Play Services, you’ll always stumble in something that requires Play Integrity to function correctly, and they won’t provide any way to custom ROMs manage Play Integrity themselves officially.
2. We keep on this mid-term trying to fight the unavoidable, pushing petitions and etc… Google is still in control, Android is bad way before this subject comes to the media, every new version introduces something that will help to hit the freedom of Android.

I mean, there’s no option for Android anymore, there’s no outcome where Google go back and starts providing ways to develop custom ROMs independently from their ecosystem, following the open-source philosophy. It’s clear they don’t want that. It won’t happen.

The elephant in the room as always: banking and government apps. They’re extremely strict and use everything Google provides to harden the security, making nearly impossible to be accessed via custom ROMs. We now became too dependent of such apps without realizing it.

Graphene is in the hands of Google as well, they’re not exception, relying on GrapheneOS is the same as relying on Google decisions.

My solution (not very good): Find another bank, switch to physical only maybe, it’s not the end of the world, it’s even better for privacy. Government apps, I can’t speak for all countries, but I guess no government can make it mandatory to access government services using a smartphone unless they’re providing it for free. So, same solution, go to physical government places. After that, you’re free, go with Linux phones like PostmarketOS to have your own smartphone and forget Google exists, it’s the most reliable option long-term and way less headache once you get used to it.

Another option is buy a secondary phone, full stock ROM and apps, download only basic apps, keep it always off and only turn it on when you’ll need it, eg. government and banking apps.

That’s what I think, there’s no timeline on this universe where Google becomes the good guys, the tendency is to get worse by time. Android was good but now is gone, it was fun, but in the hands of the one of the worst victims of enshittification: Google. It’s not worth it anymore, it’s not worth your time, neither developers time anymore.