> HoopApp Loyalty I thought you can’t use “app” in an app name?
> I thought you can’t use “app” in an app name?
WhatsApp seems like a fairly strong counter-argument
Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
361–370 of 530 posts
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different registrar via social media until the issue was resolved. If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.
It was Zoho. Their registrar took down their main domain after a few phishing reports.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/zoho-pulled-offline-after-...
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#363For years there’s been a manual penalty in Google search results against the website I created that would - were the penalty not in place - let me afford to be self-employed. It was put into place during Matt Cutts' tenure at Google - before his quiet exit from the company. I actually pressed him on the issue in a thread here on HN and he lied about it.
Forget procedures, guidelines, terms of service. Individual Google employees can and do destroy businesses, with impunity, and with no accountability.
It’s always difficult to distinguish incompetence from malice. But Google is the worst of all possible universes: both incompetent and malicious - and completely uncaring about that fact.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#364This is why I am building a terms of service rating system. Companies need to pay an economic price for their broad, one-sides terms of service. This is the op-Ed I wrote in the Financial Times: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/40e558ce-158...
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#365This is what you get for using offshore developers, without knowing who they are, what they do, what they did.
I understand people want to get rich by releasing apps and other stuff, but if you depend on other people to do this, you will fail miserably. There is a very small percentage of apps being successful with this method.
Do marketing or something else. Do not depend on random companies (especially offshore) for the entire project. The OP had the idea, not the solution. It is really not surprising to see these type of issues. What if the developers disappear next month and you have a major bug? You can't fix it and will fail. It is their code and your company on the line.
Find local real developers, work with them, or learn to do it yourself. Do not work with offshore especially $5 an hour. I understand google did something harsh, but this is the owners fault, not googles. Use your own credentials, do the most important things such as deployment and source control. You gave the master key to offshore people and get shocked when things go sideways. When will people learn?
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#366Earlier 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…
No, Google sends a "litigation paralegal" to small claims court. But you will eventually lose: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-go... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bo...
Because any other approach would be game-theoretic suicide. If it became common knowledge that you could threaten to sue Google to get special treatment, that's exactly what everyone would do in every situation where some kind of special treatment was desired. The special treatment would no longer be special; it would be the normal treatment. And so the typical costs associated with handling developers detected as fraudulent by automated defenses would skyrocket. Somebody would have to pay for that, either the shareholders (lol, not likely), or non-fraudulent developers, in the form of handling fees.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have some examples of Google doing that? (Honest question. I would remember it if I'd heard about that happening, but I might very well not hear about it in the first place.)
From a sister comment: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bo...
FWIW, this isn't Google going "hard" on someone. Rather, it's just Google defending themselves under the law, as you would expect.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#368The 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…
Not sure what you mean by "attract developers". Attract implies competition, but when a startup releases an app, there's no choice but submit it to the Play Store, due to its 80% smartphone market share.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like you’d like to see Google classified as a class II common carrier...
I wonder - how big does a company have to become before a society steps in and says "you have enough power to control and affect the lives of X% of our citizens. Therefore, we must have a say in how you conduct your affairs." I mean, this is for all intents and purposes what regulation is - and the reason for it. Otherwise, set aside the very idea of government as a farce, and populate the world with a dystopian patc…
Exactly. It's always been the same bargain as with government.
'We the people / customers / market recognize that it's in our interests for your functions to be centralized (whether through functional necessity, efficiency, etc), however, in return for our granting you a monopoly we demand some say in how you run your affairs.'
The alternative should be, if Google isn't willing to accept that, then they deserve a lot harsher anti-competitive regulation. The GDPR would be the tip of the iceberg, and would continue into preventing their leveraging their size and customer knowledge into new related industries.
Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep G Suite, but buy your own domain (whatever.com) so you are in total control. If they ban you, just change DNS records to point to zoho or some other provider.
> Keep G Suite Why, so Google can pull the rug out from under me at the least opportune moment?
And lose all the emails and Google docs associated