Used to be much, much worse. They used to force you to go find a setting called something like ‘allow apps from outside the Play Store’ and tick it, show you warning screens, then when you tried to install an app from it, it would take you out of the store to say ‘do you want to install this from an untrusted location?’

Edit: and that’s before we get onto the subject of Play Protect, which is used to wipe applications from phones that are contrary to Google’s interests but not actual malware.