When I installed fdroid from their website a month or two back it was like 2 or 3 clicks. Then whenever I want to install anything from there it’s an extra click or two over what it would be from Play.
I’ve seen people click through way more complicated processes than this without even knowing they did it. Modern computing has taught people to just keep hitting whatever the approval text is (yes windows, I really do want to copy all of these god damn files. Yes, really, I still do! Yep, again, ALL of them!)
Yeah, and I can’t speak for everyone here, but I didn’t even bother trying it even though I was intrigued. It seemed like the kind of thing that could be completely game-changing and I wasn’t willing to get hooked on another Googler’s pet project that’d just get the axe in a few years. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy at this point, nothing new is likely to get any traction because no one wants to run the risk and then Google cancels it. If they were willing to put in writing that they’ll support something for x number of years (that’s end user facing, not just whatever contracts they make with devs or whatever), it’d probably go a long way, but they’re not willing to support an expensive flop if the product is what actually sucks, so, they’re not likely to do that.
Hell, even anything older still runs the risk at any time :-\