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Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income
- pgt 5y agoI de-Googled my life over this type of event.
- ncmncm 5y agoMe too. Life is too short, etc. Still need a work account, but use it only for work mail.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt's certainly indicative of why building your entire revenue stream on the good graces of a company that can shut you down at any moment is a bad strategy.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoYou can’t really develop a mobile app at all without running this risk
- shadowgovt 5y agoYes. I wouldn't recommend it as a revenue stream. I've written two. They're available for free. If Google decides to can me tomorrow I'll put them on my personal site available for side-loading, maybe put them on the Amazon app store, and call it a day. Don't tie critical revenue streams to the whim of a private corporation. It's high risk.
- chii 5y agoSo why doesn't other bigger companies hit the same problem? What do they do differently? Why can't you do the same personally? Is it just cost?
- nraynaud 5y agoI have not, and I'll end up with a black eye for procrastinating on that.
- igordebatur 5y agoGoogle blocked our payment profile for Riders App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitescape.ride_allinone https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitescape...). After 2 months of providing all of the required docs and getting auto-declines, I've talked to their support and they just answered (quote): "I have consulted our specialist about your account. Our specialist team has determined that this profile must stay suspended due to violations of our Terms of Service. We’re unable to discuss the specific circumstances of this or any suspensions. Our Google Payments Terms of Service states that Google Payments Corp. reserves the right to change, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Services at any time, including availability of the Services, or any Service feature, without notice or liability." The app has nearly 25k of positive ratings and currently one of the most popular apps for action sport participants. I frankly don't have any idea what to do, that's super sad.
- igordebatur 5y agoAnd the real reason is: we've closed our previous bank account to open a new one. Google tried to send a payment to our previous bank account, it has returned, they instantly locked our payments profile and that's it, the whole story.
- ShivShankaran 5y agoIt is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban any "related" account and that includes your immediate family including your spouse, parents, children and your official job/startup. I never understood this bizarre behaviour from Google. My colleagues got a taste of it when they shared their laptop and one of them had a banned account. It was a defence project and the work computers were not allowed to have internet. One common computer away from work area and in a different lan was a designated internet computer. Unfortunately one dev with a banned account set a chain reaction of getting everyone else banned.
- WinterMount223 5y agoDid their accounts end up permanently banned or could they recover them? Seems like something that could actually be abused if not. A weaponized banned Google account on a laptop. A laptop with cooties. The seven generations punishment.
- notreallyserio 5y agoI'm no longer doing android development, thankfully (never again!) -- I don't relish the thought of having to ask house guests if they or anyone they know have ever been banned from Google. I don't understand how Google can staff up their Play store with engineers given this keeps happening.
- dylan604 5y agoAnd we thought checking on COVID status was a problem, imagine if we now have to ask if someone has received a Google VAX
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoMaybe this is the key to actually getting Google to fix this. Weaponize Google bans to the point it's unsustainable for their business.
- 5y ago
- rvz 5y agoAnother day, another termination by Google Play. The reason? None. Just a generic response sent to the developers on Christmas Day. Might have been the grinch himself issuing those automated responses to others. This company and its services (including, YouTube) are run by bots and they are the ones doing the moderation and not even the humans running them care at all. Unless something completely fundamental happens, Google (and its services) don't care and they will never change.
- karmakurtisaani 5y agoNot to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful (for business) content to spread on their platform, which could lead to lawsuits, loss of advertisers etc. You can see which direction is more appealing for a corporation. So concretely, now we complain about mistreated users, but if the automatic moderation was less strict, we'd complain about extreme content. It's not an easy problem.
- GeekyBear 5y ago> Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. Google is not incapable of providing customer support. Netflix, Apple, and Amazon all manage to provide free, robust customer service. Google is simply unwilling.
- remram 5y agoExactly. Additional this is not a free platform like YouTube or Gmail: creating a Google Play account costs money, and Google took a cut of every app sale. Saying that Google has too many free users to provide support doesn't make sense here...
- 5y ago
- noneeeed 5y agoBased on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue. I find it hard to imagine that people in Google are unaware of this problem. I often wonder if this has happened to people with more clout who have managed to pull strings to get it sorted, or if Google have just got lucky and managed to avoid hitting someone who might actually be in a position to fight back.
- winrid 5y agoThe problem is they make everything powered by machine learning. Can you imagine getting such a thing to even 99% accuracy? Even if it was 99% accurate, that's still hundreds of thousands if not millions of mistakes.
- s17n 5y agoI doubt there's much ML involved here. Have you tried getting humans to 99% accuracy?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago> Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue. Lots of other reasonable explanations that match the available evidence and involve Google caring about this issue. For example, their hands could be tied by legal forces beyond their control. Or they could care a great deal, but perhaps they have been unable to resolve this issue with an acceptable false-negative level on actual bad actors. Another possibility is that the ban was well-earned and the article's author knows this and simply has not disclosed the fact to the readership.
- noneeeed 5y agoWhat sort of legal issues would prevent Google actually providing some information on the reason for the ban, of prevent it actually engaging in any kind of useful communication? My issue with these bans is not the bans themselves, but the Kafkaesc process in which you are supposed to argue why you think their decision is wrong without knowing what they based the decision on.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWhat is the answer to this in a world of scammers, bad actors, etc? Perhaps it should be illegal to ban a user and if a user is truly abusive then sue them in court for damages. Speaking of suing, why has nobody sued Google or others for this behavior?
- emptyparadise 5y agoGoogle really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoI think if users could sue for this sort of thing Google would start doing that because it would be cheaper than fending off lawsuits.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved Flip side of this is compromised accounts, or those doing illegal or dangerous things would run far longer.
- l-lousy 5y agoYou can still suspend an account immediately and wait for someone to appeal before engaging the expensive human support
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoYour account would get suspended, and google would contact you to verify what happened, that your account did whatever it did, and if it was you or someone else doing that. It's not the suspending that's the problem, it's the inability to find out why it was suspended, and the inability to get someone to reinstate your account.
- 5y ago
- davidg109 5y agoUnfortunately, anytime you depend on a third party whether it be Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., this is the exact risk you take. Don’t feed the dragon.
- LinAGKar 5y agoWhat's the alternative? Google essentially has a monopoly on distributing Android apps.
- BeetleB 5y agoThe alternative is to find a business model that doesn't involve making mobile apps. Businesses are much older than smartphones.
- heavyset_go 5y agoThis. If you want to make any kind of mobile app, you have to deal with the Apple and Google duopoly that's had a stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market for over a decade now.
- shadowgovt 5y agoThe alternative is don't feed the dragon. There are already enough Android apps in the world; don't incentivize the ecosystem by building more. Build for another platform or build for something other than mobile devices.
- protomyth 5y agoI still think some congress person needs to pass a consumer rights bill that forces companies like this to disclose the exact reason and data relating the account termination. The excuse of security practices should not come before consumer rights. Frankly, we would ALL also be safer if the decision had to be made based on conduct on that specific service and could not include anything outside that service. There is a certain scale where your company is now an internet utility and you should have to act like every other utility.
- aaomidi 5y agoActually it should go one more step further. Companies making over a certain amount should be banned from outright removing your access to your account. At most it should be making the account read only. People have a right to their photos, emails, conversations, and data they have safeguarded to these companies.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoI think I agree with you, but I will say I don’t envy Google’s position on this one. They have massive amounts of fraud and spam to contend with. Coming up with a system that allows them to retain legit uses but prevents them from shutting down naughty people doesn’t sound good. There need to be a mechanism that allows account recovery in a way that is actually sustainable.
- glitchc 5y ago
- aaomidi 5y agoThen just put these accounts in read only mode. It's not like Google ever deletes the data these bad accounts made.
- R0b0t1 5y agoSeems reasonable to make Google liable for your damages. They've incentivizing people to use their store, and then pulling the rug out from under them. Similar logic has already been applied in the US for e.g. rapes that occur on a business' property. If they're incentivizing you to come their, they are liable for bad thing that happen to you.
- cft 5y agoAs a small (or even medium) developer, relying on a Google Play app is very dangerous. Our app with user generated content was pulled from Google Play store, because they found one profile out of 36 million (!) that had a suggestive photo. They used our profile search functionality to find it, you could not get it just by scrolling profiles. We have a neural net that rejects anything resembling porn and extensive word vector based text filtering, that forbids searching for anything explicit (unlike their own Google search app). The app cost us about 1m. Appeals were rejected with template emails. The enforcement is clearly selective, because Twitter has plenty of much more explicit porn.
- Beltalowda 5y agoNever mind the tons of porn on Reddit. They did ban the OnlyFans app though. How many people use their mobile phone as their only internet device? So we now have two companies with essentially identical policies deciding what is or isn't too sexy for us with essentially zero accountability...
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoThe irony here is Google hides behind Section 230 immunity to avoid any responsibility for bad actors on its platforms (claiming it's even vital that they are so immune), but it doesn't extend that idea to entities under it.
- LgWoodenBadger 5y agoYou lost 1m (dollars, euro, pounds, ?) and only attempted to use an automated mechanism notorious for replying with “lol no” and that’s it?
- mohamez 5y agoAt this point competition is one of the great solution to this problem.
- heavyset_go 5y agoUnfortunately, as of September of last year, Google Play's terms and conditions match Apple's App Store's terms and conditions, in that apps must use Google's payment method and cannot advertise or include links to alternate methods of paying for the app or distributing it. Ultimately, these policies are meant to further restrict viability of competition by either company.
- nonbirithm 5y agoJust a few days ago Google announced that you could use Spotify's payment method as an alternative to Google play. The top-rated HN comment for that article was: "As a user, why would I choose this?"[0] Competition only works if the competition is effective enough to change user habits. For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify instead? Other examples of frustration induced by competition are: - Epic Games Store timed exclusives (people would rather just use Steam) - The fragmentation of streaming video across a dozen different paid services, each with their own exclusive licensed content (people would rather just save money by paying for a single service with everything on it). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782735
- nyuszika7h 5y ago> For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify instead? If it's 30% cheaper, that may be enough of an incentive. Though I don't know if that's the case here or if Spotify just eats the fee when you pay through Google.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
- gjsman-1000 5y agoForcing App Stores to have more clarity behind terminations is a missed opportunity for the EU’s Digital Markets Act. This is absurd. #PlayFairGoogle #GoogleScrewsDevs
- shadowgovt 5y agoPublic disclosure of the reasoning behind the decision and an appeals process through an independent third party would be expensive but worth it. These are, hypothetically, things that could be demanded by law.
- hwers 5y agoFor anyone curious about what kinds of apps this person developed, this is what I could find https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/developer/1076545147/Roberto-Carreno-Dorado/ https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/developer/1076545147/Roberto-... Seems like an app providing radio for free.
- KaoruAoiShiho 5y agoCan't read spanish but possibly piracy problems?
- pollomonteros 5y agoI can and it seems to be an app to listen to Latin American radios specialized in Cumbia music. I am not sure of the legality of it ,though,since there are already a handful of online radio players available and those seem to be doing just fine as far as I am aware. Maybe it gave access to some paywalled content ? Either that or some algorithm thought it was something illegal and flagged it as a such.
- naoqj 5y agoLooks like he had lots of radio apps, wallpapers, etc. Probably copyright-related problems.
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- gjsman-1000 5y agoThis happened to the developers of Terraria last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935 Modern Google is defined by Hypocrisy.
- timcavel 5y ago
- caseysoftware 5y agoIt's a private company. If you don't like it, just build your own app store, phone, account management, email provider, search engine, web browser, ISP, payment processor, banking system, currency, DNS provider, registrar, colo facility, machines, chip fab, silicon wafers, electrons, and universe. Geez, don't be lazy.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
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- HNHatesUsers 5y ago
- grujicd 5y agoGoogle recently flagged downloads of my app as a malware for no reason whatsoever. It's a B2B software used in companies worldwide since 2005, digitally signed, virus checked, not a freeware with some stange business model. Nothing even remotely shady. As good as it gets when we're talking about downloadable stuff. When download gets flagged Chrome will block the download, but that's not all - Firefox is using Google's safe browsing service as well, meaning my Windows software was only available through Edge at that point. Essentially dead. Luckily, it was sorted out in a day or two but it was really scary. First request for review was even rejected, so I poured more info and arguments into second one, mentioned that we're advertising this software on Google Ads for all those years... If these requests were denied it would practically kill my company and the only source of income for my family. And I'm not even using their platform like Google Play where you're in contractual relation and they can argue you're breaching some of the clauses.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- heavyset_go 5y agoThis also happens with websites that distribute application downloads. If one system flags your application download as malware and puts it on a list, those lists are shared to, and aggregated by, organizations that exist up and down the software and network stack. At no point does anyone actually verify if what is on those lists is actually malware.
- chillfox 5y agoSo have a pool of separate domains for downloads?
- abeppu 5y agoThe post author is from Spain. Does GDPR not give the author some rights? I'm in no way an expert in this area, but multiple seem to apply to this situation, but the most important ones here seems would seem to be the "right to explanation" to know how such a decision was made, a "right to rectification" to correct any data which is incorrect, and (given the magnitude of the impact) a right to avoid automated decision-making (though article 22 says this applies to decisions with a "legal effect"; does this qualify?). And if GDPR doesn't apply for some reason ... why not?
- alex-yark 5y agoGDPR should help but if the apps were hosted on a developer account registered to a business entity, the majority of data will relate to the business rather than the individual, in which case GDPR may not throw up a huge amount. I don't believe the automated decision making parts of GDPR apply to businesses either. In the UK at least, if it wasn't a registered business (limited company) then there is no legal distinction between you and the trading name and hence all the rights under GDPR would be available to you.
- skmurphy 5y agoThe lack of due process and any real transparency is troubling. It's clearly a mistake to bet your livelihood on a platform that can act in an arbitrary and capricious manner.
- golem14 5y agoWe don't know the background, and the content of the previous mails Google has sent this developer prior to the alleged account disabling. OP conveniently left that information out. Without that, it's hard to draw any conclusions. Some infractions are also difficult to convey back to the developer. For instance, I believe a business might not be allowed to communicate details, if account is under police investigation and there is suspicion that the developer might destroy evidence, that sort of thing. I'm not saying this developer has done something wrong, but we just don't know. It's definitely infuriating if you are trapped like that.
- skmurphy 5y agoI agree we don't know all of the facts, but one fact not in dispute is that there is no recourse if Google Play has acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. When startups choose platforms and partners, they can pick ones who are small and friendly but more likely to go out of business, or larger ones who will persist but may harm them without recourse. There may be some middle ground where the platform or partner is large enough that near term viability seems reasonably certain and they remain reasonable to deal with, offering transparency and due process. The OP did single out Google Play, saying they were substantially more transparent and helpful: "There are other Google services such as Admob and Google Ads and for example if I have a problem with Google Ads I can contact them and they quickly offer me support. To try to improve advertising campaigns, you don’t even have to be the one to contact them, but they themselves send you an email saying that they are at your disposal. In fact, on one occasion I had a conversation with a very nice woman on Google Meet. On the other hand, if I have a problem as a developer on Google Play, things change, I only get a text form and always answers from templates, so I can never get “Human” support when I have a problem with my developer account." Which gives him points for honesty in my book. It's possible he has left damaging information about himself out of his story that would materially affect our perception of his situation. Bt to me it's more likely that he is telling the truth and for whatever reason Google Play is unwilling to explain their actions, much less justify them.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoA good reminder to everyone who ever works on a software product. Architects, Developers, QA, Security, Product Owners, Managers, Marketing, Sales, etc. Don't make your decisions based on what "the business" wants. Make your decisions based on the human lives that are impacted by your work. People are more important than money.
- butz 5y agoIf you are a business in EU you can request mediation (https://support.google.com/legal/answer/9792937#zippy=%2Crequest-mediation https://support.google.com/legal/answer/9792937#zippy=%2Creq...). In some cases filling an appeal might work. We usually get only "Google canceled account" part of the story, but no follow up how it ended. Recently was a similar case with Simple Keyboard app, where developer got account terminated, but it was re-instated after few weeks: https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard/issues/333 https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard/issues/333 . Makes me wonder how many incorrectly terminated accounts are actually recovered?
- nhumrich 5y agoEven if recovered, 3 weeks of a suspended account can do a lot of damage.
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoMan, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to update.
- josephg 5y agoThe first step is moving to a custom domain. You can stay on gmail if you want; but set up a custom domain, and set up email on it and tell everyone to use your new email address. Once you have a custom domain, it becomes way easier to change to another email service without losing any messages.
- gregmac 5y agoTotally agree. I've been doing this for over a decade. I've barely used my actual Gmail address for anything. I've gone through many incarnations of email, but at some point Gmail was just a solid enough UI, had the best spam filtering, and so I switched. Everything just forwards to my Gmail address. I have a personal domain which is also setup as an outbound address. Several other domains/addresses also forward. I also do a wildcard *@something.example.org which I use for accounts/signups (unique email per site), which lets me track who's selling my address (or is breached) and has some other security benefits.
- cube00 5y agoThe wildcards are fantastic. I got some spam the other week, emailed the company that passed on my address (they didn't even think to remove their website name from the address) and ask for them to remove all my personal information and they couldn't even a muster a reply. Guess they weren't expecting that.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoSo when you reply in gmail, that reply is sent using the smtp server for your custom email domain? Where do you host that?
- Someone1234 5y ago
- MaxGanzII 5y agoIn my experience, all the major platforms eventually close all accounts.
- jonesnc 5y agoIt's these kinds of stories that remind me that governments are not the only bodies of control that laboring people must contend with -- corporations have just as much, if not more in some cases, power.
- soundnote 5y agoThe worst part about corporate power is that writing laws to restrict the kinds of nonsense Apple and Google do is hard as fuck, tends to trample on more general rights. On the other hand, not doing anything lets the government pressure the corps to do stuff the government can't do, like censor stuff pretty indiscriminately, and is basically playing a straw libertarian that's merely allergic to the word "government" - private Ingsoc is fine.
- brudgers 5y agoWith rare exceptions, I read my-account-was-canceled stories and there’s something sketchy. Here it’s: I became part of a company where we teach people to create their own applications and create their own app business. Logically there’s nothing wrong with that. Empirically, in 2022 the reliable ways for random developers to make money by publishing apps involve gray areas at best. I mean, what are the generically applicable methods this company teaches likely to look like? How Google handles whack-a-mole accounts isn’t surprising.
- TylerE 5y agoSounds kind of like the old "marketing training" scam, where once you pay for $5000 or whatever what they teach you is... "spam a bunch of websites about how to start your own marketing business for $5000"
- zuminator 5y agoNot saying Google is in the right here by any means, but I'm a bit suspicious of these complaints where the party curiously omits the details of why they were banned, the nature of their previous earnings, etc.
- alsetmusic 5y ago> I'm a bit suspicious of these complaints where the party curiously omits the details of why they were banned I read it as the dev had no warning or explanation.
- vhold 5y agoThe image of the email he did post says he received previous emails with the reason.
- Beltalowda 5y agoOther people have gotten similar worded emails, but never received any previous emails. For example when the account of simple-keyboard's dev got banned: https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard/issues/333 https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard/issues/333 Maybe there were previous emails, maybe not. I wouldn't put too much stock in that sentence.
- whatshisface 5y ago>curiously omits the details of why they were banned That's a difficult thing to accomplish when Google has not provided them the details of why they were banned.
- zuminator 5y agoMaybe not, but it stretches credulity that they have absolutely no idea, not even a guess, as to the cause. The ban letter says they previously received other notices. Where are they? And what steps, if any, did they take to resolve then? They don't even describe their app, which ordinarily would seen like the first thing to do to establish the injustice of the affair. "My app just makes generative cat photos. What's ban-worthy about that?"
- rsync 5y agoHave your lawyer write a letter. As in, a real legal demand with a complaint attached that is addressed to their counsel and includes estimates of monetary damages and alludes (not threatens) to the specific jurisdiction and court it would be submitted to for adjudication. Send copies of this letter, by registered/certified mail, to several contacts. They will have to respond to this and these responses will be expensive. If you are in the right - even marginally so - your account will get fixed because it will be much too expensive to continue to ignore you. Filling in web forms and emailing form addresses costs google nothing. It makes perfect sense that these actions (appear) to have identical results as doing nothing.
- paxys 5y agoYou can send Google a hundred "legal demands" (whatever that means), but they have no reason or obligation to reply to any of them. You can sue them over it, but a company of that scale handles literally hundreds of lawsuits a day. Almost all of them are frivolous, and will be dismissed.
- andrew_ 5y agoThis is the correct answer to the situation.
- pdonis 5y agoIt might seem like a "correct" answer, but it's not, because it won't accomplish anything. Google has orders of magnitude more money and resources to fight a lawsuit than any individual plaintiff does. This particular plaintiff is not the first, or even the thousandth, to have this problem and find that it's not fixable. The only really correct answer to the root problem here is for developers to stop using Google Play as a distribution channel. There is more than enough data out there by now to make it crystal clear that everyone who does that is doing so at the mercy of Google's whim. No sane person should be trying to build an actual business that will provide income they and their families depend on on such a shaky foundation.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
- threesmegiste 5y agoObey the new Gods.
- paxys 5y agoThe fact that this guy didn't even say the name of his apps or what they do makes me pretty suspicious of the whole thing. There are enough developers who don't add any value but instead rely on spam, malware or piracy/copyright infringement to get big. I have zero sympathy in those cases, and support Google and Apple taking action against them.
- Method-X 5y agoAgree. If this was legit, he would have mentioned some of his apps. He was probably banned for spam / garbage apps.
- heavyset_go 5y agoThe assumption that the engineer who was banned did something wrong is a bit misguided when there's no evidence for it, but there are countless examples of Google banning users who did nothing wrong. There are even some of those engineers in this thread posting their experiences of being banned by Google. The opaque and capricious nature of Google's ban hammer, and the special type of an ML-driven bureaucratic nightmare they inflict upon users, affects many people that did nothing wrong at all. Real people and their livelihoods are affected by Google's policies, and that problem exists even if we choose to assume, without evidence, that the OP was a spammer.
- paxys 5y agoThe "countless evidence" you mention mostly consists of stories just like this one, and they all add to the confirmation bias. I'm not saying Google is right in 100% of cases, but going by the prevailing opinion here you'd think it was impossible to have a Google account or publish an app without unwarranted banning, but hundreds of thousands of developers are doing just fine with no complaints. I'd like to be able to judge this case for myself, but if the developer isn't sharing any of his prior communication with Google or any of his apps, why do you think they deserve the benefit of doubt?
- nanochad 5y ago
- ChicagoDave 5y agoa. does the OP have any idea of why they were booted? b. were there previous emails about breaking terms of service? c. what are the apps in question and: 1. were they culling personal data and selling it? 2. were they doing something else cringe-worthy? 3. did the apps have a bait and switch quality? 4. were in-app purchases targeted at kids? The OP has not explained everything they need to in order to garner real sympathy here. I'd love to get on the bandwagon with pitchforks, but the OP hasn't demonstrated enough to do that.
- perrohunter 5y agoI was that “let’s use google cloud” guy, but more recently after so many horror stories like this I’m more of a “let’s not use google cloud” guy. I rarely see people complaining about AWS or Azure on HN
- Schroedingersat 5y agoActual service providers and federated software, not fiefdoms. If you can't transfer to a competitor over the weekend you're not a customer, you're livestock.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- unreal37 5y agoThe only app I could find seems to be an app that transmits radio stations from South America. https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/app/1459155539/Radios-cumbia-online/ https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/app/1459155539/Radios-cumbia-...
- WheelsAtLarge 5y agoI feel for the family. There should be an appeals process. Since google is reluctant to create a process, I would go as far as having the people that bring the appeal pay the costs if they lose. By having the loser pay the cost it would reduce the frivolous ones to a minimum. The app market places have become too important to have big tech dominate every aspect of it.
- halostatue 5y agoIt’s no better on the consumer side. When I end up closing my GSuite account, apparently Google has no way for Play content to be shifted to a new account, and that means that three people will be losing content, apps, and possibly photos. I don’t care that much for my own (it’s $60 of apps for a platform I don’t use), but two people on the GSuite account have committed to Android (against advice) and used their workspace accounts. I’m a little more than pissed off. Twitter rant about this: https://twitter.com/halostatue/status/1508157896797958149 https://twitter.com/halostatue/status/1508157896797958149
- akagusu 5y agoIt's incredible how many people here follow the mindset "greedy rich megacorp is right, poor individual is wrong".
- jgod 5y ago"If you don't like it, build your own", Is what most people on this site say against demographics they don't like, when it happens to them, so let's keep the ball rolling. If you don't like it, build your own Google, Android, Phone, and Play Store. Easy !
- tluyben2 5y agoI am going to bet these people were axed by the ads machine learning and not by the Google play team. Please make sure to not rely only on ad income; it ends badly as Google has the monopoly on those; other ads generally do not pay unless you can do media buys which are also dangerous as usually you don’t have that many actual different brands buying. As with anything, you need to diversify and make sure Adsense/admob is 33% or less of your income and that 66% is enough for you to survive.
- b3nji 5y agoThis is very sad. If you decide to build a business based on someone else's model this is the risk you take. The same can be sad for people who rely on Amazon for their business.
- xtat 5y agoThe lesson repeats itself weekly on HN: Don't build anything that sits in an app store unless you are BFFs with someone at the store. This is tech oligarchy.