Could be, but that could also just be done locally. Like your phone checking the apps you have installed and seeing if the same ones are on the play store. Having an install limit for an app - assuming that means that the app can only be installed some total number of times globally (a local install limit wouldn’t make any sense I think) - necessarily implies that when you install an app through an APK, it has to tell Google that you installed that app so it can track how many people have installed it and not approve installation of the app if it’s over whatever the limit is.
That has just always been the case as long as the app in both stores uses the same package string. (Like org.blitzortung.android.app or org.videolan.vlc)
I’m pretty sure that was implemented a while ago. My install of VLC from F-Droid started showing up in Play Store’s update list.
It couldn’t update since the signature didn’t match, but Google knew about it and included it anyway.
Could be, but that could also just be done locally. Like your phone checking the apps you have installed and seeing if the same ones are on the play store. Having an install limit for an app - assuming that means that the app can only be installed some total number of times globally (a local install limit wouldn’t make any sense I think) - necessarily implies that when you install an app through an APK, it has to tell Google that you installed that app so it can track how many people have installed it and not approve installation of the app if it’s over whatever the limit is.
That has just always been the case as long as the app in both stores uses the same package string. (Like org.blitzortung.android.app or org.videolan.vlc)
Wasn’t always the case (I think it changed within the past two years), but upon doing research on when it changed I stumbled on this gem.
“Google would never do something like that” comments just one year ago. Oh my! Google dropped the “don’t be evil” motto a long time ago.