Most Android devices that ship in countries that aren’t China come with the Google Play Store and other Google apps and services pre-installed. While the Android operating system is open source, these Google Apps are proprietary and Google requires phones, tablets, and other devices to meet certain requirements before they can be shipped with Google Apps pre-installed.
But some device makers load Google Apps on products that haven’t been certified by Google, and some users load Google Apps on devices that didn’t ship with them (like phones running custom ROMs or Amazon’s Fire tablets).
Now Google is putting up a bit of a roadblock: but it seems to be one that’s not too hard to drive around.
Some users recently started seeing a “Device is not certified by Google” message when attempting to run Google Apps on devices that hadn’t been approved for Google Mobile Services (GMS).
According to Android Police and xda-developers, the screen has information for users (you bought an uncertified device), manufacturers (how to get your device certified), and custom ROM users (fine, we’ll let you in).
That last option is the one you’ll want to check out if you see a message saying you’re using an uncertified device. While Google says it’s aimed at custom ROM users who have installed a third-party version of Android such as LineageOS, it could also apply to users who want to install the Play Store on other devices, like an Amazon Fire tablet.
Just visit g.co/AndroidDeviceRegistration and enter your Google Service Framework ID number. The easiest way to do that is using a third-party app like Device ID (which you can download from APKMirror if you don’t have the Play Store installed… which you probably don’t if you’re running into this problem).
Google says the reason it’s blocking uncertified devices is that it can’t guarantee a safe or stable user experience. Of course, the fact that the company lets you circumvent its restrictions by entering a GSF ID sort of undermines that point… but I guess if you have to jump through some hoops at least you’ll be aware of the fact that running Google Apps on an uncertified device might pose some security risks.
Android Police notes that it’s more likely Google is doing this to keep phone makers and vendors from trying to circumvent the certification process in the first place. It remains to be seen how effective that will be.
No more Amazon tablets in my future plus now I HATE Google more. Everyone looses. Stupid move Google.
Hummm… I wonder what the impact of this will be on Fire tablets?
It won’t unless you installed Google Play or Google Apps. Apps from Fire Store will continue working.
The Fire Store is missing many apps. I sideloaded Google Play so I could add the apps I could not find in the Fire Store. This move makes the Fire tablets less appealing.
Google has been amusing their monopolistic power with Android and youtube/search since 2011. They very sneakily started replacing the default AOSP with crappy versions and keeping the good versions for their services. But the worst thing they did was that they integrated their own Location Services into the Android Studio so when devs make games and apps that rely on Google’s services, it renders them useless on other storefronts since they lack those services. So they would have to either recompile using other replacements and most devs dont care to do that for other storefronts.
What good is an open source os when the applications are bound to google’s play services which can’t be gotten without submitting to Google’s will. It was a brilliant yet very evil move on Google’s part. Hopefully the Progressive Web Apps become the great equalizer and take some power away from google and apple.
No sh!t Sherlock.
It’s pretty much the end of putting playstore or gapps onto Fire Tablets since they are uncertified. Google took their amazon feud to another level.