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Your position is a common response: paint the affected individual in such light that you can safely state he's different from you, and making it obvious this wo

Your position is a common response: paint the affected individual in such light that you can safely state he's different from you, and making it obvious this wouldn't possibly happen to you. The important facts, irrespective of the correctness of app suspension are: a) App suspension led to Google Wallet suspension. Google Wallet can be used as a payment processor, so this decision could have affected entirely independent revenue streams. It's inexcusable for Google to do this! b) Google support is awful. This is a known fact. AdSense suspensions are probably the most common. I've been affected by one. Google does not answer. Ever. Period. (well, if you're lucky you get a canned response). The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people. I'm uncomfortable. And so should you be.

byuu 12y ago
B is probably a legal issue. If they give you any additional information outside of their canned, lawyer-approved responses, you may be able to use that in a legal claim against them.
kazinator 12y ago
I can't speak for _petronius, but what makes this guy obviously different from me is: * he thinks that an icon which links to something on the web is an "app", whereas I think that an app is something which contains a significant amount of program logic. * he thinks that changing the configuration (like YT channel id) generates a whole new app. This is like claiming that, at your Unix command line, "grep foo" is a different app from "grep bar" because we changed the string that it looks for. * he thinks that going from an "app" with a hard-coded YT channel to one with a user-configurable channel is a big step in development, the "real app". * he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet. * he cannot see what he obviously did wrong: make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks, etc. In response to the first takedown, I would have pulled all copies of this app immediately. Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google.
- baldfat 12y ago
  He also claims to have done $500,000 of development for the eco system for Google in the spirit of Open Source with the development he had done before being banned.
  - SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago
    Yeah. That's a bit ridiculous. If that was $500,000 of work, I should be a billionaire.
    - 67726e 12y ago
      His logic is probably: VALUE = timeSpent * overpricedBillingRate In reality he only provided about as much value as people found in the app.
    - kasey_junk 12y ago
      To be fair, he claimed that those he would have charged out each of those apps at 50K for custom development time. I don't know if he has the pipeline, infrastructure, etc. to actually bill out clients for Android apps at that rate, but that doesn't sound like an extremely high number to me for custom software work. You are confusing $500K worth of "work" with $500K worth of billing. A common problem in our industry.
      - SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago
        I don't think he could have found clients gullible enough to pay that much for what's essentially a web view in a minimal wrapper. But I suck at the marketing.
      - ColinCera 12y ago
        Yeah, except he himself described the first app as "simple" and the next 9 apps after the first consisted of nothing more than changing the YouTube channel id the app pointed to and changing the app's name. $50,000 seems pretty exorbitant for a "simple" app that does nothing more than embed YouTube videos. $50,000 for the literally 5 minutes of work involved in changing the channel ID and app name is downright comical. There's no way to spin this as $500,000 worth of work. I don't care what his billing rates are. (And I suspect his billing rates aren't very high to begin with — he doesn't strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed.)
_petronius 12y ago
I'm not sure I was painting him as "different" from me, or even making it about him vs. me at all. The onus is on you, the person using the service, to understand what terms and conditions you have agreed to abide by when using that service. If Google fail to uphold their end of the agreement and you lose revenue, you can seek remedy through legal means (although, obviously, that's a pretty crap position to be in); if the agreement doesn't protect you from arbitrary banishment from the service for life, then that is important to know up front. It would be awesome if Google's support was better; it would be awesome if they were more responsive to the people that make their money through the marketplace they've set up; but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. (I am making no qualitative defense of that fact, merely describing its existence.) If one doesn't keep those things in mind, then regardless of how irresponsible Google is or isn't, that failure constitutes a kind of irresponsibility all its own. Whether I personally would never fall afoul of something like this (possible, since I'm a programmer, not a lawyer) is secondary to the best way of dealing with a much larger company that holds all of the cards (follow the terms and conditions; heed the multiple warnings they give you). My personal discomfort at Google acting like jerks is, too (insofar as I don't currently rely on them for any kind of revenue).
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. So businesses don't have any ethical obligations then? Cool.
  - krschultz 12y ago
    They do, but I don't think Google is ethically obligated to let this guy post spammy apps that are closely named to companies he doesn't officially work with. I've been a professional Android developer for 2+ years and a user for longer than that. I'm 100% in support of Google banning this guy from the Google Play store. One of the major misunderstandings about the Play Store is that there "are no rules" in comparison to Apple's App Store. That's not the case. Apple filters up front, Google deals with terms & conditions violations after you are already published. Now, I think the negative here is that he conflated his personal accounts with his publishing accounts. I generally recommend against that, even if you are a hobbyist developer.
moogleii 12y ago
I agree Google support is awful, but if I'm reading this correctly, he named one of his apps "Vice TV." He sounds pretty naive if he thinks he can get away with that. I don't buy it either. I think he intentionally played dumb.
imsofuture 12y ago
>The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people. Walled gardens and all that. We're all choosing to play in them.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  The walled garden I can live with. The problem is that his actions inside the walled garden had effects outside. It's like crashing your car while drunk driving causes your insurance company to cancel your credit card (because the same company owns both your bank and your insurance company).
  - midnightreactor 12y ago
    You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author. It's a matter of convenience, not necessity, to bank and insure through the same company, but this exposes you to a greater degree of risk, which only compounds with irresponsible behavior as a customer. End of story. He shouldn't have used his personal account. That's part of the reason individuals do things like set up LLCs, to shield individuals from liability in operations related to business, but maybe this guy can't be bothered to understand stupid business or legal logic behind such decisions. This whole thing reeks of an appeal to pity and logical fallacy. His background is not especially relevant to report on the situation. His switch from Apple to Android fandom and why he made that switch are even less important. If anything, his purported history as a developer should have given him every single indication that what he was doing was subjectively wrong, according to Google. He ignored these signs and subscribed to his own styling of reality. Seems like a sensitive homebrew developer with an overinflated ego ($500k worth of time, my ass) got iced for his bad behavior. Natural selection in action.
    - sergiosgc 12y ago
      > You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author. Come on! Unnecessary ad-hominem. I'm easily googleable and obviously not the author. I won't dignify the rest of your comment with an answer.
angersock 12y ago
Relevant bit from the article: Google explicitly states that any new accounts created by you will be immediately terminated. Google tracks everything you do. They track all the IP addresses you access your accounts from. They read your mail and track your location, they read your docs, they know your credit card numbers and home and work addresses. They also know who your friends are and who you chat with and email. It’s possible, but incredibly difficult to fool their surveillance. His Google Music account was cancelled as well. And one could imagine, easily, Google launching a platform (Google Fraud Detection) to allow 3rd parties to determine if a developer or system is suspect--which in turn could result in blackballing for everyone.
hashtag 12y ago
While I don't disagree that Google support is abysmal, they do respond if you know the appropriate channels. I've gotten support for both Adwords and Adsense and can successful claim I've been unbanned from both at different periods of time. That isn't to excuse your point but wanted to put this out there that while difficult, it is possible.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I couldn't get through to Google help pages for adsense because their webforms block on my (real) surname. Mildly frustrating.

byuu 12y ago

B is probably a legal issue. If they give you any additional information outside of their canned, lawyer-approved responses, you may be able to use that in a legal claim against them.

kazinator 12y ago

I can't speak for _petronius, but what makes this guy obviously different from me is: * he thinks that an icon which links to something on the web is an "app", whereas I think that an app is something which contains a significant amount of program logic. * he thinks that changing the configuration (like YT channel id) generates a whole new app. This is like claiming that, at your Unix command line, "grep foo" is a different app from "grep bar" because we changed the string that it looks for. * he thinks that going from an "app" with a hard-coded YT channel to one with a user-configurable channel is a big step in development, the "real app". * he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet. * he cannot see what he obviously did wrong: make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks, etc. In response to the first takedown, I would have pulled all copies of this app immediately. Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google.

baldfat 12y ago
He also claims to have done $500,000 of development for the eco system for Google in the spirit of Open Source with the development he had done before being banned.
- SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago
  Yeah. That's a bit ridiculous. If that was $500,000 of work, I should be a billionaire.
  - 67726e 12y ago
    His logic is probably: VALUE = timeSpent * overpricedBillingRate In reality he only provided about as much value as people found in the app.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    To be fair, he claimed that those he would have charged out each of those apps at 50K for custom development time. I don't know if he has the pipeline, infrastructure, etc. to actually bill out clients for Android apps at that rate, but that doesn't sound like an extremely high number to me for custom software work. You are confusing $500K worth of "work" with $500K worth of billing. A common problem in our industry.
    - SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago
      I don't think he could have found clients gullible enough to pay that much for what's essentially a web view in a minimal wrapper. But I suck at the marketing.
    - ColinCera 12y ago
      Yeah, except he himself described the first app as "simple" and the next 9 apps after the first consisted of nothing more than changing the YouTube channel id the app pointed to and changing the app's name. $50,000 seems pretty exorbitant for a "simple" app that does nothing more than embed YouTube videos. $50,000 for the literally 5 minutes of work involved in changing the channel ID and app name is downright comical. There's no way to spin this as $500,000 worth of work. I don't care what his billing rates are. (And I suspect his billing rates aren't very high to begin with — he doesn't strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed.)

_petronius 12y ago

I'm not sure I was painting him as "different" from me, or even making it about him vs. me at all. The onus is on you, the person using the service, to understand what terms and conditions you have agreed to abide by when using that service. If Google fail to uphold their end of the agreement and you lose revenue, you can seek remedy through legal means (although, obviously, that's a pretty crap position to be in); if the agreement doesn't protect you from arbitrary banishment from the service for life, then that is important to know up front. It would be awesome if Google's support was better; it would be awesome if they were more responsive to the people that make their money through the marketplace they've set up; but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. (I am making no qualitative defense of that fact, merely describing its existence.) If one doesn't keep those things in mind, then regardless of how irresponsible Google is or isn't, that failure constitutes a kind of irresponsibility all its own. Whether I personally would never fall afoul of something like this (possible, since I'm a programmer, not a lawyer) is secondary to the best way of dealing with a much larger company that holds all of the cards (follow the terms and conditions; heed the multiple warnings they give you). My personal discomfort at Google acting like jerks is, too (insofar as I don't currently rely on them for any kind of revenue).

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. So businesses don't have any ethical obligations then? Cool.
- krschultz 12y ago
  They do, but I don't think Google is ethically obligated to let this guy post spammy apps that are closely named to companies he doesn't officially work with. I've been a professional Android developer for 2+ years and a user for longer than that. I'm 100% in support of Google banning this guy from the Google Play store. One of the major misunderstandings about the Play Store is that there "are no rules" in comparison to Apple's App Store. That's not the case. Apple filters up front, Google deals with terms & conditions violations after you are already published. Now, I think the negative here is that he conflated his personal accounts with his publishing accounts. I generally recommend against that, even if you are a hobbyist developer.

moogleii 12y ago

I agree Google support is awful, but if I'm reading this correctly, he named one of his apps "Vice TV." He sounds pretty naive if he thinks he can get away with that. I don't buy it either. I think he intentionally played dumb.

imsofuture 12y ago

>The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people. Walled gardens and all that. We're all choosing to play in them.

sergiosgc 12y ago
The walled garden I can live with. The problem is that his actions inside the walled garden had effects outside. It's like crashing your car while drunk driving causes your insurance company to cancel your credit card (because the same company owns both your bank and your insurance company).
- midnightreactor 12y ago
  You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author. It's a matter of convenience, not necessity, to bank and insure through the same company, but this exposes you to a greater degree of risk, which only compounds with irresponsible behavior as a customer. End of story. He shouldn't have used his personal account. That's part of the reason individuals do things like set up LLCs, to shield individuals from liability in operations related to business, but maybe this guy can't be bothered to understand stupid business or legal logic behind such decisions. This whole thing reeks of an appeal to pity and logical fallacy. His background is not especially relevant to report on the situation. His switch from Apple to Android fandom and why he made that switch are even less important. If anything, his purported history as a developer should have given him every single indication that what he was doing was subjectively wrong, according to Google. He ignored these signs and subscribed to his own styling of reality. Seems like a sensitive homebrew developer with an overinflated ego ($500k worth of time, my ass) got iced for his bad behavior. Natural selection in action.
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    > You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author. Come on! Unnecessary ad-hominem. I'm easily googleable and obviously not the author. I won't dignify the rest of your comment with an answer.

angersock 12y ago

Relevant bit from the article: Google explicitly states that any new accounts created by you will be immediately terminated. Google tracks everything you do. They track all the IP addresses you access your accounts from. They read your mail and track your location, they read your docs, they know your credit card numbers and home and work addresses. They also know who your friends are and who you chat with and email. It’s possible, but incredibly difficult to fool their surveillance. His Google Music account was cancelled as well. And one could imagine, easily, Google launching a platform (Google Fraud Detection) to allow 3rd parties to determine if a developer or system is suspect--which in turn could result in blackballing for everyone.

hashtag 12y ago

While I don't disagree that Google support is abysmal, they do respond if you know the appropriate channels. I've gotten support for both Adwords and Adsense and can successful claim I've been unbanned from both at different periods of time. That isn't to excuse your point but wanted to put this out there that while difficult, it is possible.

DanBC 12y ago
I couldn't get through to Google help pages for adsense because their webforms block on my (real) surname. Mildly frustrating.