My Email to CCI against Android Developer Verification

Google recently announced that it’ll be forcing developers to register with government identity cards on their platform to be able to distribute Android applications anywhere. I came across keepandroidopen.org in FSMK’s chat group today. So I quickly composed an email to Competition Commission of India. Here’s the mail that I sent.

Sub: Google is abusing market monopoly to force developers to use its platform To: cci‑chairman@nic.in

Dear CCI Chairman,

I’m a hobby software developer and also an advocate for software freedom.

With shock I came to know about Google forcing all developers who are developing applications for Android to be using their platform alone https://developer.android.com/developer-verification

This will prevent third party stores like f-droid from distributing applications. Re: https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html

This is extremely harmful for the freedom of android users as well as the competition that’s allowed against Google. Google is already pushing a lot of other restrictions on Android through its OEM agreements. You have taken note of this earlier, for example in https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2123289

Please also investigate this “Developer Registration” program and consider intervening.

More details are in https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides and in https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/assets/pdfs/introducing-the-android-developer-console.pdf

Akshay