4 ms·

Again, I'm not DEFENDING this position, but... Assume you've got a a super-successful app making $100k/month. Then a bug in the market messes up its ratings (l

Again, I'm not DEFENDING this position, but... Assume you've got a a super-successful app making $100k/month. Then a bug in the market messes up its ratings (like it did last Friday) and as a result they lose ranking and several hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few months. They complain about it in a forum, and a helpful engineer says, "Oh, yes, that's a mistake we pushed to the Market. Sorry our testing procedures aren't better. I'll fix it right away!" Bang, they've just publicly admitted negligence, and that developer could sue them for the lost $$$. Again, I have seen NO proof of this. It's a going theory primarily because the money-oriented arms of Google (Market, AdMob, AdSense) are also the three that are the most tight-lipped over support issues.

mrich 15y ago
I don't see how they could be sued, even over such a comment, since I'm sure they don't make any guarantees regarding the availability of the market, much less for the ranking/search functionality. You would have to prove malice or gross negligence but I think for the latter you would need good lawyers to have a chance.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  You can be sued (in the US) over anything. They could certainly be sued for screwing things up without even any public evidence, but as you point out it's difficult to prove gross negligence, so most people won't bother. But certainly it becomes much easier if you have evidence from someone inside the company. YOU don't really need to see how they could be sued, or how an engineer's comments could put them at risk, in any event. If Google's legal counsel believes it to be a risk, then that COULD be what's going on behind the scenes. And this is exactly the kind of thing that a lawyer would advise, which is really my only point.

4 ms·

Again, I'm not DEFENDING this position, but... Assume you've got a a super-successful app making $100k/month. Then a bug in the market messes up its ratings (l

by SomeCallMeTim 15y ago

mrich 15y ago
I don't see how they could be sued, even over such a comment, since I'm sure they don't make any guarantees regarding the availability of the market, much less for the ranking/search functionality. You would have to prove malice or gross negligence but I think for the latter you would need good lawyers to have a chance.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  You can be sued (in the US) over anything. They could certainly be sued for screwing things up without even any public evidence, but as you point out it's difficult to prove gross negligence, so most people won't bother. But certainly it becomes much easier if you have evidence from someone inside the company. YOU don't really need to see how they could be sued, or how an engineer's comments could put them at risk, in any event. If Google's legal counsel believes it to be a risk, then that COULD be what's going on behind the scenes. And this is exactly the kind of thing that a lawyer would advise, which is really my only point.