> Governments are cementing a monopoly they claim to oppose

Duopoly but yea. Because there is no third alternative. Microsoft failed/gave up with Windows Phone. The people trying to fix secure government services can't really tackle that issue, but the systems needs to be built now anyway.

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ulrikrasmussen 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are viable third alternatives which do not require building a full smartphone stack. The national eID in Denmark, MitID, is an app "protected by" Play Integrity, but at least there are two non-smartphone alternatives available in the form of either a TOTP code generator or a FIDO2 chip which you can get for free if you can't or won't buy a smartphone.

Age verification solutions could also be built on dedicated hardware tokens, even though the tokens required to build a ZKP or blind signature based solution may not be available off the shelf right now.

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flir 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> but the systems needs to be built now anyway.

I question that premise.

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hilios 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They can't tackle issue oft establishing a 3rd popular mobile operating system, true. But they could support Desktop Linux or AOSP.

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edukite 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Last I checked Android was OSS and there's plenty of clones without any Google BS. Heck I'm using one now

	▲	hilios 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah but if the wallet requires Google Pay Services attestation the AOSP based clones won't be able to run it unless they can spoof it somehow.

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pjmlp 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Windows Phone wouldn't be much help here, still an US company.