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Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

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Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#171
post #69

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.

This, also Mark accessed his account for the first time after this issue ?

It sounds a lot like he gave his credentials to his dev team which is a major violation of the ToS of the play store.

But hey, looks like reading these is too hard, better to just whine afterwards.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#173

I don't understand why anyone has to do with Google in 2019, with all that's come to light. The only trace of them I have left is my Chromebook, which admittedly is hard to match. (Any suggestions?)

That there might be plenty more traces you have missed.

https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#174
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it's actually functionless, but it's not a "please reconsider your decision", but only "please check you haven't made an error" they probably expect everyone to hit, and treat it as such.

I guess it boils down to if anything is actually checked, ever, or if its just a glorified autoresponder. The always super-vague nature of the responses does not fill me with confidence as to the former.

[deleted]

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#175
post #44

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…

Google does not seem bound by the burden of proof you describe. What evidence supports your claim?

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#176
post #40

Being shocked about this happening in 2019 in either Apple's or Google's app store represents an incredible lack of even cursory research on the author's part. Unless the author shares specific details showing that the ban of the associated account was inappropriate, my reaction is: good, glad you got booted. If one of the people you chose to associate your account with was previously a bad actor or involved with one…

You are asking people, possibly non-technical people, to do thorough background check on each prospective associates and past associates of prospective associates. The not feasible nor reasonable.

I'm suggesting a business person conduct themselves like a business person. While I understand that they might have been enthusiastic and inexperienced, there is a reason things like contracts and due diligence exist in the world. Businesses of all sorts, generally run by very non-technical people, need to do background checks on people in key positions all the time to avoid exactly these sorts of issues. For an app store based business, anyone associated with the app's account is in a key position.

What is it about an app store-based business that is supposed to make them immune from these realities?

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#177
post #32

Is it unfair to form a poor opinion of Google because it's typical for people to only ever share bad experiences? Anecdotally I feel like I have come across so many of these stories, and each of them sound terrible / symptomatic of a broken/apathetic company. It feels like the money keeps rolling in through ad revenues, and then spent on developing projects like Inbox, Reader, and 5 chat apps, all of which get discon…

I think it's interesting to note that Google seems to come up much more often for Kafkaesque customer support problems. That's not a rigorous scientific statement, but it's fairly consistent with my own experience dealing with Google as a startup. Unless you have a back channel via an employee you know, it's next to impossible to get any non-automated, human judgement on your situation. The part I don't get is... whe…

I think what a lot of people forget or don't appreciate is the sheer scale of FAANG companies and what they deal with on a regular basis.

People complain about how they can't talk to a human being about their one specific issue. These companies are not mom and pop stores dealing with a handful of suppliers, just sitting there waiting for their phone to ring - they're huge businesses operating in hundreds of countries 24/7/365 handling probably millions of interactions with "customers"/suppliers every year with all sorts of different processes and policies in different jurisdictions.

On Hacker news we hear about someone falling through the cracks in the system every couple of weeks, but we don't hear about all of the bad actors/viruses/malware getting blocked/removed from the app stores or cloud vendors everyday

There are people out there whose strategy is "throw enough shit and something will stick" who are trying their hardest to publish their malware as much as possible every single day and it's (IMHO) frankly something of a success/miracle that we've not seen any more major abuses of the app stores and cloud platforms.

People on HN complain bitterly about the potential for ad networks to distribute malware, but then get mad when FAANGs ban accounts that are linked to bad actors. Sure it is sad that some people are innocently caught in the crossfire but what are the FAANGs to do? Damned if they do, damned if they don't?

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#178
post #149

This is awful and I feel terrible for them, but a lot of alarm bells went off when I read this: I then attempted to login to my ‘Google Developer Account’ for the first time. Previous to this our app developers were the only ones to access our account to upload and update our app for us It sounds like they violated probably one of the first requirements of the ToS not to share account credentials. From there ... real…

"From there ... really anything goes as to what that developer could have done with those credentials intentionally or otherwise."

They paid them to make the app though, they could put literally anything in there and even with them sending them builds that they uploaded themselves it would have been just as easy to be nefarious so this justification is thin at best.

Are there shared accounts in the google app scene or is giving your credentials to the developer the only way to give them access?

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#179
post #112

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…

So says you. This is what the ToS say: Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30) days' prior written notice. In addition, Google may, at any time, immediately suspend or terminate this Agreement with You if: (a) You have breached any provision of this Agreement, any non-disclosure agreement or other agreement relating to Google Play or the Android platform; (b) Google is required to…

Disclaiming liability is not an excuse for treating your customers poorly.
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