The experience is far more inferior than publishing on f-droid. Sure, on f-droid it can take a while. It may require some technical knowledge to speed things up. I have created myself a fork of f-droid data, built, etc.

The amount of work was nothing, in comparison with Google Play Store.

You need to verify account

• that means you need to pay to have developer account. It is not a small amount. It is a cost of AAA game
• then the process required me to scan my ID
• since my ID was not working for the Google bot,
• I had to scan my driver license, give my phone number
• then the process had stuck. For longer than a week I have been waiting
• I had to create a help ticket, waited some moer
• after a few days they responded that they had sent some e-mail. They cannot do anything in this matter, that only I can search for it, and respond
• The e-mail was asking weather I am relative of someone famous. I am not. So I replied to that e-mail
• I have received from Google console information that invalid picture was sent with invalid form. Kid you not
• So I created another help ticket, with screenshot of this interesting problem
• Someone at google helped me this time, and unlocked my account.

After that I thought it would be relatively easy, but no.

• I had to go through process of testing. Internal testing, close testing
• It had asked my e-mail, telephone number (again)
• I had to full details about the app, that is understandable, but there were several pages of that, with questionairies about it. It asked not only about what rating it is, but what kind of data I am distributing. Maybe it is important for them
• I had to create tester e-mail list, but the list could not be sent if filled manually. It only worked if I submitted e-mails via csv file
• It asked my also if my app has advertisment system
• I have to find 14 different testers, with different devices

All in all many questions, but I have a feeling that bad actors can still go around these issues. For them it is no problem to find 14 different testers, or submit an app, that looks plain and simple, just to bait and switch later on.

The protection does nothing, while it all looks like a game to get off government lawyers. If they did not implement such measured, they would receive many complains.

All this work, which just make it all harder for simple developers like me.

Data

What I don’t like is how much data Google captures about you:

• Email
• Phone number (verified)
• Real Name
• ID (so city, street)