Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would that be so wrong?
Yes - they're a private company, albeit unfair in this particular instance.
Almost all title II common carriers are private companies.
Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
281–290 of 530 posts
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#282Can he not create a new account for his company, not the developers, and be the one to publish the app? It's not like he has a history to preserve (ratings, reviews, etc). I imagine he has a contract with the devs so he can get the app in some form (hopefully access to source too) and publish it himself. Of course, publishing to mobile phone stores can be difficult for non technical people, but if that is the case he…
Look at the screenshots in the article of the messages from Google. Those may be generic rejection letters, but they seem to be threatening him specifically to avoid creating new accounts as a workaround...
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's basically how it works. It costs you very little(couple hundred £ at most) to ask a lawyer to craft a letter to send to Google legal team saying they have to resolve the issue for you within 14 days or you will be taking them to court. And if there's one thing that's absolutely certain is that Google's law team's time is way more expensive than whatever lawyer you found to write a letter or two is going to cha…
If your theory here was true, why does every small business who gets in this situation get stuck with no recourse when its just a few hundred to fix the problem? Yes, Google could likely not handle the legal costs if everyone went after them in court. Much like prosecutors in the US, what Google does is go hard on anyone who tries to defend themselves legally. At the point the calculus a small business has to make is…
Would a class action work here?
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can b…
> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
It wasn't an internet business, so I didn't have to deal with those kinds of perils.
But more to your point, I knew a guy who put one on .com, one on .info, one on a county tld. Advertising material rotated through the three. His logic was that it didn't really matter what address was advertised because people just hit a search engine for the brand name. I haven't spoken to him in years, so I don't know how it worked out.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#285I saw this recently on r/Androiddev:
https://github.com/SimonMarquis/InternalAppStore
If I ever release another Android app, I'll probably self release and skip the Play store.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#286I 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…
It’s not hard to create a new account and get accepted again, hypothetically.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#287Slightly off topic, but: My main problem in getting away from Google is: who will protect my email/phone accounts as well as Google does with GMail and Google Voice? Sadly, those are the main means of authentication for my multiple financial accounts (for most banks phone and emails are the only 2FA methods available). I am not worried about the privacy issues, I'm mostly worried about Google deciding to terminate my…
Realistically speaking a hacker has more incentives to attack GMail than any domainer. I'm not saying that Gandi or whoever is more secure than GMail, just that there are more chances that something goes south with the latter rather than the former.
Following your logic, I would expect my bank to be hacked way more than the few careless customers of the bank itself who leak their credentials via stupid phishing attacks, since the returns are many orders of magnitude higher?
I’m not sure it works that way, incentives are always balanced by the practical effort required to achieve the goal, and the effort of breaking google is massive compared to the effort of violating a DNS registrar.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#288As I suggested recently, these companies need an ombudsman to escape the crazy when the normal processes lead to crazy outcomes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092039 A $50 payment to the ombudsman, refundable if the ombudsman decides in the customers favor, would discourage the obmudsman being overused.
You are describing mandatory binding arbitration, eh?
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a bit of a silly comparison. Even if you let a criminal borrow your car and they do something bad, there is some sort of legal apparatus to get your car back if it's clear that you were not involved in that criminal activity. The impound lot doesn't simply say "sorry, we saw your appeal, but we're gonna go ahead and keep the car forever."
You would think. But civil forfeiture doesn't care who owns what they take, only whether it was used in a crime. You may be stuck paying court costs to defend your property and get it back. Which is why we have tons of ridiculous court cases like: "Bag full of hundred dollar bills V. US Government."
There's a lot of people that think civil forfeiture is also fundamentally wrong.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#290The author should be more careful when hiring remote developers and giving them full access to his account. It looks like he hired some people with the previous history of Play store fraught and Google caught up with them.
I run a consulting company myself. When we develop mobile apps for our customers we usually recommend them to assign one of their employees to manage App/Play store accounts and publish new versions. The company responsibilities under online store TOS are not necessarily covered by the development agreement they signed with us and if they want to ensure the compliance they should do it themselves.