As the article mentions, this isn't a security "feature," it's anti-competetive. The worst part is that Nextcloud isn't even really in competition with Google. Setting up a Nextcloud server isn't hard, but it's not a trivial task. Sharing it outside your local network also requires a bit of skill, especially if done securely. That is to say, Nextcloud users probably tend to be more tech-savvy.

The people using Nextcloud aren't going to suddenly decide to switch over to Google Drive. I'll get it from FDroid before I downgrade to Google Drive. If that wasn't an option, I'd set up an FTP server or even WebDAV.

Thankfully the full feature will still work if you get the app from F-Droid

Hopefully this will motivate more people use F-Droid

Unfettered capitalism is just fucking exhausting. What a bunch of assholes. I really need to degoogle my life. Idk how to strip android off my phone and replace it with whatever, but I guess I'm about to find out.

Edit: ty all. I'm gonna check out f droid and go from there!

So, all the family phones that are using this feature for handset backups. They're just gonna stop backing up?

Thanks, Google. Thanks for protecting me from free software that scans files on my own phone and transmits it across my own network to my own server. Such a privacy nightmare. /s

I never use a Play Store version of anything I can find on F-droid or other repos I trust. Then I try it using Aurora Store. Only as a last-resort I try Google. Play Store is only for things I cannot obtian or replace another way.

F-droid bitches

Tl;dr: Google being anticompetitive by hampering third-party cloud sync via permissions (while themselves are not affected).

It seems that Google just gave them back the permission, 2 days after they publicly complained about it and after 6 months of ignoring it. What scumbags.

I don't have an Android phone currently but I thought I'd check on iOS and, yep, Google Drive has access to all files. Well that's a bit hypocritical.

When I switched to iOS, the biggest pain point for me was Apples stranglehold on background processes meant file syncing didn’t work very well. Now it looks like Android has completely killed it?

The more tech-savvy of you are certainly able to use the alternative app store, such as F-Droid. But for our user base of roughly one million users on the app store, this will hardly be an option.

They have the merit to link to F-droid, but damn they are not selling it well...
I don't even know if they get any remuneration from Google anyway?
By the way fuck Google

Great news. Maybe someone else will think about the rejection of Google.

So, I totally remember this pop-up and luckily until now it has not directly impacted me. I auto-backup my photos/videos off my phone and do move non photos/videos on/off nextcloud on occasion but haven't noticed I could no longer upload regular files.

Luckily...

I self-host Nextcloud I already use F-Droid

So, it wasn't much work to uninstall the play version and instlall the f-droid version. I should probably go through all my apps and see what's available on f-droid and swap. But 1) that's a lot of work and 2) there are some features that break when you do that. I know some mapping software won't work on Android Auto if not from the play store.

Oh look, Android users suffering the same bullying behavior they accuse Apple of inflicting on its users!

I use FreeFileSync and it syncs whatever files I point at it, not just videos and music. I installed it from the Play store.

oh so thats why it stopped working.

I had no idea this was going on. Is it because I'm running Lineage?