I've used Android for 11 of the last 12 years, and have appreciated its relative openness and tinkerability, as opposed to Apple's walled garden. Seeing this makes me sad, users are given fewer and fewer reasons to stick with Android :(
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What's wrong with app bundle? asking curiosity I really don't know
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APKs can be end-to-end signed with keys under developer control. You can move between app stores or no store (data is preserved on update with same key). And Google can't fuck with it. (Well, they can fuck with the entirety of the rest of the phone, so that point's kinda moot.)
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App bundles are play-store exclusive and signed with Googles own keys. They pinky swear to deliver an 'optimized' version.
In the future that could mean "we'll just slightly redirect all ad serves through us" or similar, and you couldn't switch your users to a different store.
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Oh, I didn't knew that, I thought it was the appx, this is horrible!
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App bundles are an intermediate format which you use to generate apks. The tooling is entirely open source. It's entirely possible and sensible to use app bundles as part of your release infrastructure without involving the Play Store and while signing your own apks.
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Sure, but that is not what the concern about Google forcing you to only use Google signed app bundles in the play store is about.
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Developers should release their apps outside the Play Store too rather than only on Play Store.
The OS package manager pins the key after the initial install but you still always trusted the Play Store for the initial install and they had Play Store App Signing before bundles.
On devices integrating Play services / Play Store as part of the partnership program they can do an unattended app install / uninstall and they can also obtain app data for most apps due to being one of the hard-wired allowed backup services.
They provide core OS components too.
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Stuff like the package installer / permission controller, app runtime, etc. on their partner devices are provided via APEX components built by Google and shipped via the Play Store. Only people truly impacted by this are people using devices without Play getting apps from Play.