"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em" Deciding to use the Google Translate API in a way that bypasses Google's API-key system seems

"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em" Deciding to use the Google Translate API in a way that bypasses Google's API-key system seems like a dangerous game. Google controls your access to the Android platform† and now that this blog post has been published, it seems like Google could remove the app from the Play Store for unauthorized access of Google services. If they'd found a way to use an API from some third party, maybe that third party would try and shut it down or whatnot. In this case, it feels like they're poking the bear - especially given how much traffic they might throw at it. At some point, Google might get annoyed that an API that they charge a lot of money for is being used for free and somewhat legitimately remove Telegram from the Play Store. Google can pretty legitimately claim that the Telegram app was accessing Google's servers in an unauthorized way and that they went through steps to obfuscate their access which shows that they knew what they were doing was wrong and tried to hide it. This seems like a bold move. Google might simply shrug and not care. Google might decide that they'll remove Telegram from the Play Store permanently. Google might decide they'll only allow Telegram in the Play Store if it doesn't have translation features. If Google removes Telegram from the Play Store, that's basically the end of Telegram. As people bought new phones, the number of people reachable on Telegram would dwindle‡. As the app no longer could receive updates, eventually it would become old and stale. They'd have to start moving to another platform whether WhatsApp or Signal or Matrix. †sure, other stores and side-loading exist on Android, but Google does control access for the vast majority of Android users (at least in the US/Europe). ‡yes, maybe one can transfer apps and side-loading does exist, but the number of users would dwindle