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I'm testing Element and Matrix at American Airlines.

There are big players with clout that take issue to instability such as this. How can I rely on my company using Element when it gets pulled? Not cool Google...

To the element team, reach out to me if you can't get the support you are looking for.

discuss

markvdb|5 years ago

This comment alone should be reason enough for the company behind Element to sue Google.

walrus01|5 years ago

Google may be able to control the Element app on the play store, but at least for the server side there's no way to do that with synapse (the official matrix protocol server side implementation), which is fully open source and distributed directly from the developers.

brettwilcox|5 years ago

They are also working on a Go version called Dendrite - https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite

The Matrix team is doing a LOT of cool stuff. :)

ensignavenger|5 years ago

How can you rely on the app/play store for any app? This suspension has nothing to do with element, it could have been any app.

volta83|5 years ago

Can't you just use a web app or any other matrix client if this happens?

If Google were to "ban" slack from their store, their browsers, etc. then you would be quite in trouble.

But with matrix, just pick a different client and move on.

brettwilcox|5 years ago

Yes, I'm doing a custom react client integration. AA has to prepare for black swan events from every angle and this is a perfect example of one.

When you have 100,000+ employees, it's not trivial to just switch up communication platforms.

justaj|5 years ago

There are debug version apks available here: https://buildkite.com/matrix-dot-org/element-android/builds/...

Click on "Assemble GPlay Debug version" (or "Assemble FDroid Debug version" if you don't have Google Play Services), then click on "Artifacts" and then choose your apk from there.

dewey|5 years ago

How is that a solution to the problem? Of course there's other ways to install software, just like you could build your own iOS app and sideload it with a certificate. If an app is gone from the store it's basically dead.

Arathorn|5 years ago

Sorry for this :((

tormeh|5 years ago

There are alternative clients: https://matrix.org/clients/

FluffyChat would be the main contender.

kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago

Big players with clout can commission their own closed access app. The C levels just need to take a $0.5M hit among themselves.

yorwba|5 years ago

Reach out how? You have no public contact information in your HN profile.

brettwilcox|5 years ago

We've already had conversations and I reached out personally.

eeZah7Ux|5 years ago

That's why XMPP has been adopted for military and industrial use.

acatsdream|5 years ago

You can use FDroid though.

qwertox|5 years ago

How are you going to explain that to your manager?