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A pet peeve of mine is the deferral and personification of "policy". Policy is just your opinion that you happen to have written down in the past. It holds no

A pet peeve of mine is the deferral and personification of "policy". Policy is just your opinion that you happen to have written down in the past. It holds no power over you, you write the policy! It's not like the US law, which while also just words on paper, is enforced (and often chosen by) other people over you. Me deferring to the law (vs. my own opinion) has meaning because they can be different. The way we really know this is that we repeatedly see policy broken all the time -- again, because it's just a pretend separate agent, not an actual entity that wields power over you. It does in fact ultimately just serve to disguise an active action as a passive one "Oh, I checked the book of rules (that I wrote) and it said I can't let you do that. Shucks. Man, that book, its a tough negotiator. Nothing we can do I'm afraid." I think it is their right to write the rules, but just own up to it. Say "we aren't doing it because we don't want to," that's the truth, because if they did want to, they would, regardless of the "policy".

judge2020 5y ago
The "policy" is indeed the law, in the form of a contract - you or Google breaking that contract could mean you end up in a civil lawsuit that would cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars assuming it isn't frivolous. Instead of actually taking everyone to court and scaring off developers, they simply give themselves the option to terminate the contract if you break it instead of going to court. The thing is that they can't bend the policy for certain players without being sued for unfair business practices/anti-competitive behavior, which is why Google has to enforce it on everyone if they want to enforce it on anyone.
- tolmasky 5y ago
  Plenty of companies get sweetheart deals from Google and Apple. Your contract has no bearing on another company’s. That’s why I can’t sue Apple for giving Netflix and Amazon a more favorable deal than 30%. It’s also why I can’t sue Target for making an exception and letting someone else return something one day later than their return policy explicitly allows but not doing that for me. Furthermore, most contracts you sign (click) with Google and such usually have a catch-all clause that says everything is up to their discretion and they can change their minds on most of these subjective judgement calls.

judge2020 5y ago

The "policy" is indeed the law, in the form of a contract - you or Google breaking that contract could mean you end up in a civil lawsuit that would cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars assuming it isn't frivolous. Instead of actually taking everyone to court and scaring off developers, they simply give themselves the option to terminate the contract if you break it instead of going to court. The thing is that they can't bend the policy for certain players without being sued for unfair business practices/anti-competitive behavior, which is why Google has to enforce it on everyone if they want to enforce it on anyone.

tolmasky 5y ago
Plenty of companies get sweetheart deals from Google and Apple. Your contract has no bearing on another company’s. That’s why I can’t sue Apple for giving Netflix and Amazon a more favorable deal than 30%. It’s also why I can’t sue Target for making an exception and letting someone else return something one day later than their return policy explicitly allows but not doing that for me. Furthermore, most contracts you sign (click) with Google and such usually have a catch-all clause that says everything is up to their discretion and they can change their minds on most of these subjective judgement calls.