Android is almost dead – OSnews

Home > Android > Android is almost dead<br>The clock is ticking for Android as a (somewhat) open platform.<br>If you are running Android 8 or higher, a virus has been installed on your device and is silently awaiting remote activation. Over the past few months, devices around the world have been infected with this novel strain, with as many as 4 billion Android handsets and tablets estimated to have already been contaminated, meaning that around half of all humanity may be at risk from this threat.<br>Disguising itself as the innocuously-titled “Android Developer Verifier” (ADV) process, this trojan horse runs surreptitiously in the background as a system service with full root privileges, quietly awaiting an activation signal. The service cannot be blocked, disabled, or removed. Unlike a commonplace bit of malware, this extraordinary strain won’t be detected and neutralized by Play Protect (the malware scanning and remediation service that is installed on all Android Certified devices). In fact, Play Protect is itself the vector through which this virus is transmitted and installed.<br>That is because it is Google themselves who is propagating ADV. And once activated, this malevolent process has exactly one goal: to block you from running software by developers who haven’t been approved centrally by Google.

↫ The F-Droid news website<br>If nobody steps up, if no regulator takes on Google in this matter, we could very well be looking at the end of F-Droid and similar open source application repositories on Android. I use F-Droid, and in fact, one of the most important and most-used application on my Pixel 10 Pro comes from F-Droid: Fennec. This Firefox fork is not available through any Google-sanctioned means, and I could just wake up one day and have the browser on what is supposed to be my phone stop working.<br>Age verification, tying crucial services to iOS and Google Android, killing the ability to install your own software on your phone, purposefully making people hopelessly addicted to and dependent on "AI", and so much more – we’re facing a multi-pronged attack designed to beat us into submission and give up on the idea of Free computing. I have to admit I’ve lost all hope we’ll be able to win this battle, as the combined interests of technology megacorporations and our own governments are just too powerful to fight.<br>I feel like we’re living in the computing end times.

About The Author

Thom Holwerda

Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]

16 Comments

2026-07-03 12:51 am

Alfman verbose=1 This is an absolute travesty. If google have their way, it could very well be the end of openness and app store competition on a mainstream phone. Things were already bad enough with apple killing off owner rights on their mobiles, but with google locking down android now the pressure to submit to the google & apple duopoly will be stronger than ever. I agree with the sentiment – openness is dying for future generations. Of course as a billionaire CEO Sundar Pichai can afford not to care, but he’s spitting on owner rights and stabbing the open community in the back.<br>Thom Holwerda,<br>If nobody steps up, if no regulator takes on Google in this matter, we could very well be looking at the end of F-Droid and similar open source application repositories on Android

Would the EU step up? I don’t know if that’s in the cards but in the rest of the world nobody stepped up to stop apple’s owner restrictions, as egregious as they were. So, I don’t have much faith in politicians protecting owners from corporate takeover. Odds are high this will become the new normal and future generations will just take it for granted that all the hardware consumers own will be controlled by corporations rather than owners.

Log in to Reply

2026-07-03 6:50 am

a_very_dumb_nickname On the other hand, we may begin to see the emergence of new mobile operating systems.

Log in to Reply

2026-07-03 7:16 am

OlaTheGhost Yes, there are some alredy I believe. They just need to get enough momentum so that mandatory eID apps in emerging techno-fascist states (like Sweden) will be ported to them.

Log in to Reply

2026-07-03 1:23 pm

Magnusmaster Subject to government approval. I don’t see graphene os or anything that grants root access ever getting approved. In fact the government will make every PC and phone even more locked down than even iOS currently is. And with government malware on top

Log in to Reply

2026-07-03 1:21 pm

Magnusmaster The EU is part of the problem. Most world leaders and unelected burueaucrats have discussed about what to do with the internet behind closed doors and have agreed to implement a digital id and digital currencies in the UN Pact For A Sustainable Future (aka Agenda 2030) which was agreed to by every nation. As far as they’re concerned the decision is final and they just need to get every nation to follow a rehearsed script to pass the relevant laws without too much people complaining. And as a...