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I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much tim

by dgregd 6y ago

I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates. 10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App updates are disabled until you log in. So I had to educate my customer employees how to log in to Play Store and install my app. The additional benefit was that people had security updates of Chrome and other apps. Two months ago my app was suspended after I made all necessary changes to support Android 10. The Gbot claims that background location updates aren't essential for my app. As you may guess I wrote appeal without success. My customers pay mainly for that time report feature but Gbot knows better what my paying customers want. And I just do not care about securing my customer devices and Play Store any longer. Now I distribute apk files again and train people how to install apk files from unknown sources.

horsawlarway 6y ago
Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ of total mobile revenue), and for basically all but the largest of customers - this consent is machine based and you will never be able to get a living person to so much as glance at any content you put into the process. --- Fuck em both.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sa1 6y ago
  Me, a customer, is very happy that they play a regulatory role and are taking steps to prevent surveillance of the form GP is proposing. I’m glad that I don’t have a direct relationship with shady 3rd party developers.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    When it's an explicit feature your argument is a difficult one to hold. It amounts to not being able to use features that are available in the API.
  - horsawlarway 6y ago
    They aren't preventing surveillance at all, they're monopolizing it. Google is LITERALLY a fucking ad company. Apple is tracking the exact time and location you use any piece of software on their systems (Don't worry guys, it's just for security purposes! /s) ---- I'm no longer sympathetic to the "They're securing my device from the boogeyman!" argument. It has the same overtures as "Won't anyone think of the children!!!!" in policy debates - It's rhetoric designed to obfuscate the true intentions of the parties involved, and short-circuit real discussion with an immediate emotional response.
    - privacyking 6y ago
      > Apple is tracking the exact time and location... Source?
      - SilasX 6y ago
        A few months ago it came out that MacOS was constantly making unencrypted calls over the internet to check signatures of non-Apple software; such calls were thus feeding back to Apple (and anyone sniffing the connection) the time and IP address of each application's being opened. (Technically, only the company, but each company usually only has a few apps.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
        saurik 6y ago
        This "came out" at least 8 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23281564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23281564
- elihu 6y ago
  What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?
  - quarantine 6y ago
    The Google play framework is closed source and used by most apps.
  - resfirestar 6y ago
    A competitor would have to get most/all of the phone manufacturers to all at once drop Google Play and use their ecosystem instead, otherwise no one would bother publishing apps for it. There's no way to ramp up a competitor because users won't tolerate a subpar app selection. See Amazon's Fire Phone launch for what happens when one manufacturer tries to start their own ecosystem.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      It's actually very easily possible. Apart from Samsung, the largest phone manufacturers are all Chinese, and currently under sanction by the US government, with more soon on the way. Out of the Chinese bunch, the majority are Huawei. Huawei has been forced to move into a non-Playstore Android OS. I use a burner Huawei for non-essential Android stuff. Every time I click the "Rate App" button on apps, it redirects me to Huawei store instead of Play Store. Every time I click the "Download" or "Install" button on the browser, it sends me to Huawei store. I think we can expect to see more changes in the coming two years as Android keeps updating. Huawei phones up until 2018 are allowed to use the Google SDKs but none are allowed from 2019. The only one left behind is Samsung, which has the wherewithal to create its own (Apple clone) app store. If they go ahead with that, Google Play will be a fucking joke at that point.
      - perryizgr8 6y ago
        Galaxy store is alive and well on Samsung phones.
- rgrs 6y ago
  Yep, these content aggregators have become consumer aggregators. They make money by controlling our attention in the webverse
sebastien_b 6y ago
Please sign up as a witness at the next congressional hearings.
- jonprobably 6y ago
  Someone needs to make a website for Google suspensions. Let people post these stories. I have mine.
koheripbal 6y ago
I run a small company, and offer local business financial services. A few years ago, I setup my Google My Business listing for my retail location. Late last year I was trying to do a GSUITE account data export. It requires you to setup 2FA and I couldn't get it to work - so I asked our MSP to help since they help with other stuff. They had better luck, but multiple switching of the 2FA options and recovery emails/phone numbers caused an automatic suspension on the admin account. I was able to quickly unlock the account with another admin account, but the suspension cascaded to Google My Business, which remains suspended because GSUITE support only support their core apps. As you can imagine, my appeal went unresponded, and here we are, months later, with no business listing, and literally no ability to contact anyone that can help. I wonder how many other businesses have stories like this.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Way to go. Someone gave me an old unlocked Android phone that had almost no apps installed. Playing around with it, I removed all the installed apps and somehow I managed to also disable (break) PlayStore so that it does not work, refuses to update. If there is way to fix it, I surmise it is well beyond the capabilities of the average Android user. AFAICT PlayStore cannot communicate with the mothership to heal itself nor send user data; anyway there are no PlayStore apps installed. I installed a few useful F-Droid apks. Installing from "untrusted" sources seems far more reliable than any "app store". Besides the F-Droid apps I use it like a dumb phone with maps on a different cellular network. I wish there were more reliable sources for apks, like F-Droid, including apks for older Android versions.

by dgregd 6y ago

horsawlarway 6y ago

Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ of total mobile revenue), and for basically all but the largest of customers - this consent is machine based and you will never be able to get a living person to so much as glance at any content you put into the process. --- Fuck em both.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sa1 6y ago
Me, a customer, is very happy that they play a regulatory role and are taking steps to prevent surveillance of the form GP is proposing. I’m glad that I don’t have a direct relationship with shady 3rd party developers.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  When it's an explicit feature your argument is a difficult one to hold. It amounts to not being able to use features that are available in the API.
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  They aren't preventing surveillance at all, they're monopolizing it. Google is LITERALLY a fucking ad company. Apple is tracking the exact time and location you use any piece of software on their systems (Don't worry guys, it's just for security purposes! /s) ---- I'm no longer sympathetic to the "They're securing my device from the boogeyman!" argument. It has the same overtures as "Won't anyone think of the children!!!!" in policy debates - It's rhetoric designed to obfuscate the true intentions of the parties involved, and short-circuit real discussion with an immediate emotional response.
  - privacyking 6y ago
    > Apple is tracking the exact time and location... Source?
    - SilasX 6y ago
      A few months ago it came out that MacOS was constantly making unencrypted calls over the internet to check signatures of non-Apple software; such calls were thus feeding back to Apple (and anyone sniffing the connection) the time and IP address of each application's being opened. (Technically, only the company, but each company usually only has a few apps.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
      - saurik 6y ago
        This "came out" at least 8 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23281564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23281564
elihu 6y ago
What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?
- quarantine 6y ago
  The Google play framework is closed source and used by most apps.
- resfirestar 6y ago
  A competitor would have to get most/all of the phone manufacturers to all at once drop Google Play and use their ecosystem instead, otherwise no one would bother publishing apps for it. There's no way to ramp up a competitor because users won't tolerate a subpar app selection. See Amazon's Fire Phone launch for what happens when one manufacturer tries to start their own ecosystem.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    It's actually very easily possible. Apart from Samsung, the largest phone manufacturers are all Chinese, and currently under sanction by the US government, with more soon on the way. Out of the Chinese bunch, the majority are Huawei. Huawei has been forced to move into a non-Playstore Android OS. I use a burner Huawei for non-essential Android stuff. Every time I click the "Rate App" button on apps, it redirects me to Huawei store instead of Play Store. Every time I click the "Download" or "Install" button on the browser, it sends me to Huawei store. I think we can expect to see more changes in the coming two years as Android keeps updating. Huawei phones up until 2018 are allowed to use the Google SDKs but none are allowed from 2019. The only one left behind is Samsung, which has the wherewithal to create its own (Apple clone) app store. If they go ahead with that, Google Play will be a fucking joke at that point.
    - perryizgr8 6y ago
      Galaxy store is alive and well on Samsung phones.
rgrs 6y ago
Yep, these content aggregators have become consumer aggregators. They make money by controlling our attention in the webverse

sebastien_b 6y ago

Please sign up as a witness at the next congressional hearings.

jonprobably 6y ago
Someone needs to make a website for Google suspensions. Let people post these stories. I have mine.

koheripbal 6y ago

I run a small company, and offer local business financial services. A few years ago, I setup my Google My Business listing for my retail location. Late last year I was trying to do a GSUITE account data export. It requires you to setup 2FA and I couldn't get it to work - so I asked our MSP to help since they help with other stuff. They had better luck, but multiple switching of the 2FA options and recovery emails/phone numbers caused an automatic suspension on the admin account. I was able to quickly unlock the account with another admin account, but the suspension cascaded to Google My Business, which remains suspended because GSUITE support only support their core apps. As you can imagine, my appeal went unresponded, and here we are, months later, with no business listing, and literally no ability to contact anyone that can help. I wonder how many other businesses have stories like this.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

Way to go. Someone gave me an old unlocked Android phone that had almost no apps installed. Playing around with it, I removed all the installed apps and somehow I managed to also disable (break) PlayStore so that it does not work, refuses to update. If there is way to fix it, I surmise it is well beyond the capabilities of the average Android user. AFAICT PlayStore cannot communicate with the mothership to heal itself nor send user data; anyway there are no PlayStore apps installed. I installed a few useful F-Droid apks. Installing from "untrusted" sources seems far more reliable than any "app store". Besides the F-Droid apps I use it like a dumb phone with maps on a different cellular network. I wish there were more reliable sources for apks, like F-Droid, including apks for older Android versions.