The discussion I stumbled upon, about this SSH app for Android, is really worrying. Will Google really manage to make it impossible to root your phone?
But there’s more to this, it’s more complicated. In the Big Picture, Google has every incentive to make these changes — they lead to more security, and they’re aligned with Google’s corporate goals as well.
- When talking to users, Google will emphasize control over hackers.
- When talking to stockholders, Google will emphasize control over users.
Edit: I disagree with “they lead to more security”. That’s not “security”, let’s not turn words upside-down.
On most, if not all, modern Android phones you can just unlock the bootloader from the dev menu. No rooting required.
There are phones with locked bootloaders. But for now there are ways to unlock them. In theory though they could just lock the bootloader and that’s it, if you can’t jailbreak the device or root the stock ROM you’re out of luck.
That is actually how it used to be, you needed exploits to unlock the bootloader. This is what has been changing. It’s just the opposite direction.