Google also now managing app sigining keys, like F-Droid

[hans]

Lol, so after all those raging debates and flames, it turns out that F-Droid was a pioneer and innovator, years ahead of Google. "With Google Play App Signing, you can securely manage your app signing keys for new or existing apps. Keys are stored on the same secure infrastructure Google uses to store its own keys."

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7384423

Anyone hear anything about Google's motivations for doing this?

[nutomic]

From the article on Android Police (on mobile so no link), this is just to make things easier for developers. And also make it less likely that developers accidently lose their signing key.

[hans]

That's one consideration. But I'm guessing that's just their public reason. I'll bet they did it for very different reasons. It basically is a reversal of the driving idea behind APK signatures since the beginning of Android: decentralized cryptography and Google Play never modifying the binaries.

[sesam]

Probably for pragmatic, data-based reasons. Originally, being minimally centralised was better, but in fact developers and users are in general better served by having to do less, and the legal viewpoint is still that the key belongs to the developer, not Google, so they don't have to "sign off" on that any Play store app is not complete crap or that it won't kill kittens.