Uh, no it’s not. Quite literally the opposite actually. You can get apks for your apps outside of the play store currently, just have to install them yourself (yeah, you need to check a box to install third party apps once, but that’s it). The proposed change from google is mostly to make that harder, and make most users locked more into the play store ecosystem so that Google gets their cut from everything.

If that’s the case, then Google really needs to fix the play store because you can absolutely get malware from there. This change is mostly to start locking down the ecosystem to force users to only be able to pay Google a cut of all revenue on the platform (apple already does this). It’s bullshit, and it hopefully backfires for Google.