Except for some apps for financial institutions, all my apps come from F-Droid. I feel like I can trust their vetting but absolutely cannot trust random apps from Google's store. Why is it that unpaid volunteers can do better than one of the largest tech corps on the planet? Google is pathetic.
There's no overwhelming financial incentive in open-source applications, while both mobile stores are a constant arms race in monetization, advertisement and shady practices, where legitimate and privacy respecting alternatives are relegated to obscurity and difficult to find even if you're specifically looking for them by name. In some ways FOSS software is even discouraged from being published due to some rules (see for example donation links being strictly forbidden) and the probability of fake malicious apps, like NewPipe or SimpleMobileTools clones.
Because F-Droid contains a minuscule fraction of the apps on the Google Play store and because since F-Droid only allows open source applications it's much easier for them to determine shady behaviour (Google can't simply mandate that all apps on their store be open source).
Of course they cannot. Literally, the Play Store itself and countless other Google apps are not open source. Google doesn't operate on a FOSS model (to the point that AGPL is banned in their company).
