Last year, Google announced big changes to the way sideloading would be allowed on Android, which made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Essentially Google wanted to restrict sideloading to developers that had been vetted and approved by Google, allegedly in the name of security, rather than letting people just install whatever they like.
It's a move I like to refer to as "a bunch of Apple nonsense," and the complete antithesis of what Android has been for over 20 years. It's no surprise that Google recently did a little bit of backtracking, announcing there would be ways to sideload apps that Google hasn't specifically said you're allowed to have.
