81–90 of 530 posts
I don’t buy the guy’s analogy of crime and association. If you willingly lend the keys to your truck to someone else, and he or she commits a crime while using the vehicle, it might get impounded. Know the people whom you work with, or just do the work yourself.
I never read the TOS or EULA, either.
The question I always have with this stuff is this: To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process for supposed violations of TOS causing cancellations is always among them. But to me these "reviews" always seem either completely faked or some version of a lowest-level employee simply restating that the algo has made its choice and they are powerless. More incriminating is that every ti…
Even if they did, fraud is a high barrier, it sometimes producing "bad" results that are reversed for PR reasons isn't enough. Given the case here, "A human has looked at the account and has confirmed that the only developer that has ever used it has been banned, this matches the criteria for banning the account" would be a review. (If they really gave the app developers the credentials to the account, that alone might be a violation of the rules? But I don't know how the Play Store backend works in detail)
Businesses treating businesses badly aren't that easy to reign in.
I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times. They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 s…
He is still banned today
If you don't mind burning fifty quid or so, you might find it satisfying to use the small claims process to issue for a sensible (not super-inflated) estimate of damages. The below is not legal advice, but is written from personal experience.
Try to leave a clear paper trail of your reasonableness: send a clear notice before action with a reasonable time limit for reply, offering to settle for the estimated damages or reinstatement of your account. After this time expires, you can file a claim online.
There are then three cases to consider:
1. Google settle immediately in response to your notice before action, either with damages or another action that satisfies you.
2. You file and Google fail to turn up at the resulting hearing. You will get default judgement and should be able to add your court fee to the judgement against them given your offer in the notice before action.
3. You file, Google oppose and send representation. Assume they win with probability 1. You are down a court fee and your time to turn up and sit round the table. They've been forced to engage properly with you and the judge to ensure they take your complaint seriously, and you've had as good chance as you'll get to argue that their behaviour and/or terms are unreasonable. Their costs will be substantial and the rules do not allow them to recover them from a non-vexatious claimant...
I don't imagine there is much "discoverability" there anyhow.
This is why PWA is important: Google cannot ban a website! Also, the author should make sure to publish their app on non-Google App Stores and remind users that they still have a choice. And for those questioning on why the author is upset if they're still on the iOS store: Android is about 85% of the global market, and about 2/3rds of the US devices. iOS is this weird dying phone OS that Apple is keeping alive even…
> Google cannot ban a website! But they can make them really difficult to find. > iOS is this weird dying phone OS that Apple is keeping alive even though there really aren't that many users. lol. There are more than a billion iOS users worldwide…
Doing that would be a leg cannon.
It sounds like the problem is with the outsourced developers responsible for the app. It's their account which has been banned - for multiple violations of the ToS. Now, perhaps this is just over-zealous enforcement on Google's part, but it's also possible that these developers have created shady apps before, or are adding shady code to apps developed for others. The OP doesn't seem to know for certain what code is i…
Google has the burden of proof to show why they are guilty by mere association, but won't do it, likely because they don't want to reveal any information about how they determine who is violating the ToS. There should be greater transparency and a better appeals process, but there won't be. At the very least it doesn't seem that Google has thought of a better way to handle the scenario where an honest client relies u…
In an ideal world, code review of the app would reveal whether or not there's anything fishy going on. It doesn't seem like anyone has done this - not the OP, or Google. OP thinks their developers must be OK, and Google thinks (based on some past evidence) that they're not. This doesn't strike me as totally unreasonable on Google's part.
And just for anyone who's crazy enough (edit: and I can see they’ve come out already in the comments here) to say that he deserved it because he associated with some non-reputable people... My Google account was entered as a recovery email address by someone else. Most likely because it was a single letter removed from an abbreviation of their real legal name. I got an email informing me of that fact and instantly di…