Please call it what it is and always has been:

   I.N.S.T.A.L.L.I.N.G   S.O.F.T.W.A.R.E

"side load" is like "jay walking' seeks to stigmatize humans being human.

Same. If Google does this, my next phone will be an iPhone. Freedom is the only reason to put up with Android's shittiness. If they turn it into a walled garden, then we'll choose the better kept garden and it sure as hell isn't Google's.

Yeah. Computing freedom to have a root shell and do as I please is the entire reason I put up with Android. Google is positioning Android to just be nothing more than a worse iOS. There's pretty much no point to it anymore.

I switched from iOS to Android about three years ago. I saved all the APKs for everything I installed (or updated) on that first phone. When I got a new phone last fall it was pleasantly like getting a new PC. I imported my SMS and contacts from my last backup (taken with an open source took I'd installed from an APK), then installed all the apps I use and imported or manually set any settings I wanted to customize.

Every non-stock app on my phone was installed from an APK directly downloaded from the manufacturer or open source developer's site / Github releases. I've never had a Google Play account and have never used any Android "app store".

The biggest pain was having to manually logon the couple of sites I allow to keep persistent cookies since device owners aren't allowed to just import/export cookies from mobile Chrome.

It has been a very nice experience. I appreciate the feeling of sovereignty and ownership of my device (even though it does have a locked bootloader and I don't actually have root).

Of course Google would take this away. >sigh<