Marketing at its best....

AFAIK you can only avoid it by using a custom ROM like GrapheneOS

Best way is to not include it in the first place by using another ROM. If that's not an option, you can always remove it via root. It may also be possible to use ADB/Shizuku to get rid of it, but Google could add checks to prevent ADB from removing it. Then again apps installed via ADB aren't subject to verification.

You can buy a DeGoogled Android from Fairphone or Murena. Or if you have a Pixel, you can install grapheneos.

The implementation about to be done is actually just another smaller step to trying to be completely locked down.

In the same way you have to go and allow developer options to install apks outside of the play store now, this new thing will take you a couple more clicks to enable it and have a one time 24 hour waiting period before you can install whatever you want.

At first Google does plan to offer something called "advanced flow" that will let you install what you want. But this doesn't address the chilling effect for developers (some are just getting out of Android rather than registering and paying Google), or the censorship power it hands to Google to make "undesirable" apps harder to obtain and install. And there's no guarantee they won't just withdraw "advanced flow" one day.

https://developer.android.com//developer-verification/guides/faq#advanced-flow

The best way to avoid it is by installing an OS that doesn't include the developer verification component.

I think theres two aspects to it

• social licensing - e.g. Google tries and gets away with X, so the others now perceive they're less likely to receive excessive pushback and are emboldened to go for it. This is why I feel there needs to be a pervasive and continuous push towards consumer rights - smaller cases can snowball quickly in the wrong direction, never so in the reverse.
• share price driven margin pressure, a figurative ideal business that balanced perfectly its price/margins/costs against consumer demands/buying power would still be pushed to make graph go up and right - the usual enshittification argument.

The first feeds into the second, once your competitor moves against consumer interests, C suites are/perceive they are then under pressure to match peers, else fall behind.

Screwing over customers is baked into Capitalism, even more so with the current scale and concentration of a handful of business operating in a weak regulatory environment.